Chapter 6

THE AWAKENING

Exoriare aliquis de nostris ex ossibus ultor.--VIRGIL.

I

THE FIRST DAYS

The river glideth at his own sweet will. Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

. . . . .

Without Thee, what is all the morning's wealth? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear Mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

WORDSWORTH.

It is safe to say that England's exhausted sleep on the night of Black Saturday marked the end of an era in British history. It was followed by a curious, quiescent half-consciousness during Sunday. For the greater part of that day I should suppose that more than half London's populace continued its sleep.

One of the first things I realized after Monday morning's awakening in my Bloomsbury lodging was that I must find wages and work speedily, since I possessed no more than a very few pounds. As a fact, upon that and several subsequent days I found plenty of work, if nothing noticeable in the way of wages. I was second in command of one of the food and labour bureaux which Constance Grey helped to organize, and all the workers in these bureaux were volunteers.

Another of my first impressions after the crisis was a sense of my actual remoteness, in normal circumstances, from Constance. Her father had left Constance a quite sufficient income. Mrs. Van Homrey was in her own right comfortably well-to-do. But, despite the exiguous nature of my own resources, it was not the money question which impressed me most in this connection, but rather the fact that, while my only acquaintances in London were of a more or less discreditable sort, Constance seemed to have friends everywhere, and these in almost every case people of standing and importance. Her army friends were apt to be generals, her political friends ex-Ministers, her journalistic friends editors, and so forth. And I---- But you have seen my record up to this point.

Nobody could possibly want Constance so much as I did, I thought. But an astonishing number of persons of infinitely more consequence than myself seemed to delight to honour her, to obtain her cooeperation. And I loved her. There was no possibility of my mistaking the fact. I had been used to debate with myself regarding Sylvia Wheeler. There was no room for debate where my feeling for Constance was concerned. The hour of her breakdown in Fleet Street on Black Saturday had taught me so much.

In the face of my circumstances just then, the idea of making any definite disclosure of my feelings to Constance seemed impracticable. Yet there was one intimate passage between us during that week, the nature of which I cannot precisely define. I know I conveyed some hint to Constance of my feeling toward her, and I was made vaguely conscious that anything like a declaration of love would have seemed shocking to her at that time. She held that, at such a juncture, no merely personal interests ought to be allowed to weigh greatly with any one. The country's call upon its subjects was all-absorbing in the eyes of this "one little bit of a girl from South Africa," as Crondall had called her. It made me feel ashamed to realize how far short I fell (even after the shared experiences culminating in Black Saturday) of her personal standard of patriotism. Even now, my standing in her eyes, my immediate personal needs, loomed nearer, larger in my mind than England's fate. I admitted as much with some shamefacedness, and Constance said:

"Ah, well, Dick, I suspect that is a natural part of life lived entirely in England, the England of the past. There was so little to arouse the other part in one. All the surrounding influences were against it. My life has been different. Once one has lived, in one's own home, through a native rising, for instance, purely personal interests never again seem quite so absorbing. The elemental things had been so long shut out of English life. Why, do you know----?" And she began to tell me of one of the schemes in which she was interested; in connection with which I learned of a cable message she had received that day telling that John Crondall was then on his way to England.

The least forgiving critics of "The Destroyers" have admitted that they did their best and worked well during those strange weeks which came immediately after the invasion. One reason of this was that party feeling in politics had been scotched. The House of Commons met as one party. There was no longer any real Opposition, unless one counted a small section of rabid anti-Britishers, who were incapable of learning a lesson; and even they carped but feebly, while the rest of the House devoted its united energies to the conduct of the country's shattered business with the single aim of restoring normal conditions. Throughout the country two things were tacitly admitted. That the Government in power must presently answer for its doings to the public before ceasing to be a Government; and that the present was no time for such business as that of a general election.

And so we had the spectacle of a Government which had entirely lost the confidence of the electors, a Government anathematized from the Orkneys to Land's End, carrying on its work with a unison and a complete freedom from opposition such as had not been known before, even by the biggest majority or the most popular Administration which had ever sat at Westminster. For the first time, and by no effort of our own, we obtained the rule of an Imperial Parliament devoted to no other end than the nation's welfare. The House of Commons witnessed many novel spectacles at that time--such as consultations between the leading members of the Government and the Opposition. Most of its members learned many valuable lessons in those first weeks of the new regime. It is to be supposed that the Surrender Riot had taught them something.

It must also be admitted that General, or, as he now was, General Baron von Fuechter, accomplished some fine work during this same period. It has been said that he was but consulting the safety of his Imperial master's armed forces; but credit may safely be given the General for the discretion and despatch he used in distributing the huge body of troops at his command, without hitch or friction, to the various centres which it was his plan to occupy. His was a hand of iron, but he used it to good purpose; and the few errors of his own men were punished with an even more crushing severity than he showed where British offences were concerned.

The task of garrisoning those English ports with German soldiers was no light or easy one; no task for a light or gentle hand. In carrying out this undertaking a very little weakness, a very small display of indecision, might easily have meant an appalling amount of bloodshed. As it was, the whole business was completed in a wonderfully short while, and with remarkable smoothness. The judicial and municipal administration of these centres was to remain English; but supreme authority was vested in the officer commanding the German forces in each place, and the heads of such departments as the postal and the police, were German. No kind of public gathering or demonstration was permissible in these towns, unless under the auspices of the German officer in command, who in each case was given the rank of Governor of the town.

We had learned by this time that the Channel Fleet had not been entirely swept away. But a portion of it was destroyed, and the remaining ships had been entrapped. It was strategy which had kept British ships from our coasts during the fatal week of the invasion. "The Destroyers" were responsible for our weak-kneed concessions to Berlin some years earlier, in the matter of wireless telegraphy. In the face of urgent recommendations to the contrary from experts, the Government had yielded to German pressure in the matter of making our own system interchangeable, and had even boasted of their diplomacy in thus ingratiating themselves with Germany. As a consequence, the enemy had been able to convey messages purporting to come from the British Admiralty and ordering British commanders to keep out of home waters.

That these messages should have been conveyed in secret code form was a mystery which subsequent investigations failed to solve. Some one had played traitor. But the history of the invasion has shown us that we had very many traitors among us in those days; and there came a time when the British public showed clearly that it was weary of Commissions of Inquiry. Where so many, if not indeed all of us, were at fault, where the penalty was so crushing, it was felt that there were other and more appropriate openings for official energy and public interest than the mere apportioning of blame and punishment, however well deserved.

The issue of what was called the "Invasion Budget" was Parliament's first important act, after the dispersal of the German forces in England, and the termination of the Government distribution of food supplies. The alterations of customs tariff were not particularly notable. The House had agreed that revenue was the objective to be considered, and fiscal adjustments with reference to commerce were postponed for the time. The great change was in the income-tax. The minimum income to be taxed was L100 instead of, as formerly, L160. The scale ran like this: sixpence in the pound upon incomes of between L100 and L150, ninepence from that to L200, one shilling from that to L250, one and threepence from that to L500, one and sixpence from that to L1,000, two shillings upon all incomes of between L1,000 and L5,000, and four shillings in the pound upon all incomes of over L5,000.

It was on the day following that of the Invasion Budget issue that I received a letter from my sister Lucy, in Davenham Minster, telling me of my mother's serious illness, and asking me to come to her at once. And so, after a hurried visit to the South Kensington flat to explain my absence to Constance, I turned my back upon London, for the first time in a year, and journeyed down into Dorset.

II

ANCIENT LIGHTS

Then the progeny that springs From the forests of our land, Armed with thunder, clad with wings, Shall a wider world command.

Regions Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway.

. . . . .

COWPER.

In the afternoon of a glorious summer's day, exactly three weeks after leaving London, I stood beside the newly filled grave of my mother in the moss-grown old churchyard of Davenham Minster.

My dear mother was not one of those whose end was hastened by the shock of England's disaster. Doctor Wardle gave us little hope of her recovery from the first. The immediate cause of death was pneumonia; but I gathered that my mother had come to the end of her store of vitality, and, it may be, of desire for life. I have sometimes thought that her complete freedom from those domestic cares of housekeeping, which had seemed to be the very source and fountainhead of continuous worry for her, may actually have robbed my mother of much of her hold upon life. In these last days I had been almost continuously beside her, and I know that she relinquished her life without one sigh that spelt regret.

Standing there at the edge of her grave in the hoary churchyard of the Minster, I was conscious of the loss of the last tie that bound me to the shelter of youth: the cared-for, irresponsible division of a man's life. The England of my youth was no more. Now, in the death of my mother, it seemed as if I had stepped out of one generation into another. I had entered a new generation, and was alone in it.

I was to sleep at my sister's house that night, but I had no wish to go there now. Doctor Wardle's forced gravity, his cheerful condolences, rather worried me. So it happened that I set out to walk from the churchyard, and presently found myself upon the winding upland road that led out of the rich Davenham valley, over the Ridgeway, and into the hilly Tarn Regis country, where I was born.

I drank a mug of cider in the quaint little beerhouse kept by Gammer Joy in Tarn Regis, and read again the doggerel her grandfather had painted on its sign-board, in which the traveller was advised of the various uses of liquor, taken in moderation, and the evil effects of its abuse. Taken wisely, I remember, it was suggested that liquor proved the best of lubricants for the wheels of life. Mrs. Joy looked just as old and just as active and rosy as she had always looked for so long as I could remember; and she hospitably insisted upon my eating a large slab of her dough cake with my cider--a very excellent comestible it was.

The old dame's mood was cheerfully pessimistic--that is to say, she was garrulous, and spoke cheerily of generally downward tendencies. Thus, the new rector, by her way of it, was of a decadent modern type, full of newfangled "Papish" notions as to church vestments and early services, and neglectful of traditional responsibilities connected with soup and coal and medical comforts. Cider was no longer what it used to be, I gathered, since the big brewers took it in hand, and spoiled the trade of those who had hand-presses. As for farming, Gammer Joy held that it was not near so good a trade for master or man with land at fifteen shillings the acre, as much of it was thereabouts, as it had been with rents up to two or three pounds, and food twice as dear as now.

"But there, Master Dick," said the old lady; "I suppose we be all Germans now--so they do tell me, however; an' if we be no better nor furriners here in Darset, why I doan't know as't matters gertly wha' cwomes to us at all. But I will say things wor different in your feyther's time, Master Dick--that they was. Ah doan't believe he'd ha' put up wi' this German business for a minute, that ah doan't."

I gathered that the new rector was an earnest young man and a hard worker; but, evidently, those of Gammer Joy's generation preferred my father's aloofness in conjunction with his regular material dispensations, and his habit of leaving folk severely to themselves, so far as their thoughts and feelings were concerned.

The cottagers with whom I talked that summer's evening cherished a monumental ignorance regarding the real significance of the events which had shaken England to its very roots since I had last seen Tarn Regis. Gammer Joy's view seemed to be fairly typical. We had become German; England belonged to Germany; the Radicals had sold us to the Kaiser--and so forth. But no German soldiers had been seen in Dorset. The whole thing was shadowy, academic, a political business; suitable enough for the discussion of Londoners, no doubt, but, after all, of small bearing upon questions of real and intimate interest, such as the harvest, the weather, and the rate of wages.

"Sims queer, too, that us should be born again like, and become Germans," said one man to me; "but ah doan't know as it meakes much odds to the loike o' we; though ah hev heerd as how Farmer Jupp be thinkin' o' gettin' shut o' his shartharn bull that won the prize to Davenham, an' doin' wi' fower men an' a b'y, in place o' sevin. Well, o' course, us has to keep movin' wi' the times, as sayin' is; an' 'tis trew them uplan' pastures o' Farmer Jupp's they do be mos' onusual poor an' leery, as you med say."

Twilight already held the land in its grave embrace when I made my way along Abbott's Lane (my father had devoted months to the task of tracing the origin of that name) and began the ascent of Barebarrow, by crossing which diagonally one reaches the Davenham turnpike from Tarn Regis, a shorter route by nearly a mile than that of the road past the mill and over the bridge. And so, presently, my feet were treading turf which had probably been turf before the Christian era. Smooth and vast against the sky-line, Barebarrow lay above me, like a mammoth at rest.

On its far side was our Tarn Regis giant, a famous figure cut in the turf, and clearly visible from the tower of Davenham Minster. Long ago, in my earliest childhood, village worthies had given me the story of this figure--how once upon a time a giant came and slew all the Tarn Regis flocks for his breakfast. Then he lay down to sleep behind Barebarrow, and while he slept the enraged shepherds and work-folk bound him with a thousand cart-ropes, and slew him with a thousand scythes and forks and other homely implements. And then, that posterity might know his fearsome bulk, they cut out the turf all round his form, and eke the outline of the club beside him, and left the figure there to commemorate their valour and the loss of their flocks. Some three hundred feet long it was, I think, with a club the length of a tall pine-tree. In any case, the Tarn Regis lad who would excel in feats of strength had but to spend the night of Midsummer's Eve in the crook of the giant's arm (as some one or two did every year), and other youths of the countryside could never stand a chance with him.

I paused on the ledge below the barrow beside a ruined shepherd's hut, and recalled the fact that here my father had unearthed sundry fragments of stone and pieces of implements which the Dorchester Museum curator had welcomed as very early British relics. They went back, I remembered, to long before the Roman period; to days possibly more remote than those of ancient Barebarrow himself. If you refer to a good map you will find this spot surrounded by such indications of immemorial antiquity as "Tumuli," "British Village," and the like. The Roman encampment on the other side of Davenham Minster was modernity itself, I thought, compared with this ancient haunt of the neolithic forerunners of the early Briton; this resting-place of men whose doings were a half-forgotten story many centuries before the birth of Julius Caesar.

I sat down on the grassy ledge and looked out across the lichen-covered roofs and squat, rugged church tower of Tarn Regis; and pictures rose in my mind, pictures to some extent inspired, perhaps, by scraps I had read of learned essays written by my father. He had loved this ancient ground; he had been used to finger the earth hereabouts as a man might finger his mistress's hair. I do not know what period my twilit fancy happened upon, but it was assuredly a later one than that of Barebarrow, for I saw shaggy warriors with huge pointless swords, their hilts decorated with the teeth of wild beasts--a Bronze Age vision, no doubt. I saw rude chariots of war, with murderous scythe-blades on their wheels--and, in a flash then, the figure of Boadicea: that valiant mother of our race, erect and fearless in her chariot--

Regions Caesar never knew, Thy posterity shall sway!

"Thy posterity shall sway!" If you repeat the lines to yourself you may see the outline of my vision. There at the foot of Barebarrow I saw that Queen of ancient Britons at the head of her wild, shaggy legions. "The Roman Army can never withstand the shouts and clamour of so many thousands, far less their shock and fury," said the Queen. I saw her lead her valiant horde upon Colchester, and for me the ancient rudeness of it all was shot through and through with glimpses of the scientific sacking of Colchester, as I had read of it but a few weeks ago. I saw the advance of the Roman Governor; the awful slaughter of the British; the end of the brave Queen who could not brook defeat: the most heart-stirring episode in English history.

"Thy posterity shall sway!" I recalled the solemn splendour of another great Queen's passing--that which I had seen with my own eyes while still a lad at Rugby: the stately gathering of the great ships at Spithead; the end of Victoria the Good. No more than a step it seemed from my vision of the unconquerable Boadicea. But to that other onslaught upon Colchester--to General von Fuechter's slaughter of women and children and unarmed men in streets of houses whose ashes must be warm yet--O Lord, how far! I thought. Could it really be that a thousand years of inviolability had been broken, ended, in those few wild days; ended for ever?

Lights twinkled now among the nestling houses of the little place where I was born. They made me think of torches, the clash of arms, the spacious mediaeval days when Davenham Minster supported a great monastery, whose lordly abbot owned the land Tarn Regis stood upon.

And then the little lights grew misty and dim in my eyes as glimpses came of my own early days; of play on that very ridge-side where I sat now, where I had then romantically sworn friendship with George Stairs on the eve of my departure for Elstree School, and his leaving with his father for Canada. How had I kept my vow? Where was George Stairs now? There was not a foot of that countryside we had not roamed together. My eyes pricked as I looked and listened. Exactly so, I thought, the sheep-bells had sounded below Barebarrow when I had lain listening to them in that low-pitched back bedroom of the Rectory which I had been proud to hear called "Dick's Room," after my first experience of sleeping alone.

Then for a space my mind was blank as the dark valley beyond the village--until thoughts and pictures of recent happenings began to oust the gentler memories, and I lived over again the mad, wild, tragic week which culminated in the massacre of the North London trenches. But in the light of my previous musings I saw these happenings differently, more personally, than in the actual experience of them. It seemed now that not my country only, but myself, had been struck down and humbled to the dust by the soldiers of the Kaiser. I saw the broad fair faces of the German cavalry as they had sat their horse in Whitehall on the evening of Black Saturday. I heard again the clank of their arms, the barking of guttural orders. Could it be that they had mastered England? that for nine long years we were to be encircled by their garrisons? Nine years of helotry!

A sudden coolness in the air reminded me of the lateness of the hour, and I rose and began to cross Barebarrow.

But this ancient land was British in every blade of its grass, I thought--root and crop, hill and dale, above and beneath, no single sod of it but was British. Surely nothing could alter that. Nine years of helotry! I heard again the confused din of the Westminster Riot; the frantic crowd's insistent demand for surrender, for unconditional surrender. And now the nation's word was pledged. Our heads were bowed for nine years long.

Suddenly, then, as I descended upon the turnpike, a quite new thought came to me. The invasion had overridden all law, all custom, all understandings. The invasion was an act of sheer lawless brutality. No surrender could bind a people to submission in the face of such an outrage as that. The Germans must be driven out; the British people must rise and cast them out, and overthrow for ever their insolent dominion. But too many of the English people were--like myself! Well, they must learn; we must all learn; every able-bodied man must learn; for a blow had to be struck that should free England for ever. The country must be awakened to realization of that need. We owed so much to the brave ones who gave us England; so much could be demanded of us by those that came after. The thing had got to be.

I walked fast, I remember, and singing through my head as I entered Davenham Minster, long after my sister's supper hour, were the lines to which I had never till then paid any sort of heed:

Regions Caesar never knew, Thy posterity shall sway!

III

THE RETURN TO LONDON

Oh! 'tis easy To beget great deeds; but in the rearing of them-- The threading in cold blood each mean detail, And furze brake of half-pertinent circumstance-- There lies the self-denial.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

I spent but one other day in Dorset after my walk out to Tarn Regis, and then took train in the morning for London.

I believe I have said before that Doctor Wardle, my sister's husband, was prosperous and popular. The fact made it natural for me to accept my mother's disposition of her tiny property, which, in a couple of sentences, she had bequeathed solely to me. My sister had no need of the hundred and fifty pounds a year that was derived from my mother's little capital, which had been invested in Canadian securities and was unaffected by England's losses. Thus I was now possessed of means sufficient to provide me with the actual necessities of life; and, though I had not thought of it before, realization of this came to me while I attended to the winding up of my mother's small affairs, bringing with it a certain sense of comfort and security.

It was with a strongly hopeful feeling, a sense almost of elation, that I stepped from the train at Waterloo. My quiet days and nights in Dorset had taught me something; and, particularly, I had gained much, in conviction and in hope, from the evening spent by Barebarrow. I cannot say that I had any definite plans, but I was awake to a genuine sense of duty to my native land, and that was as strange a thing for me as for a great majority of my fellow countrymen. I was convinced that a great task awaited us all, and I determined upon the performance of my part in it. I suppose I trusted that London would show me the particular form that my effort should take. Meanwhile, as a convert, the missionary feeling was strong in me.

I might have made shift to afford better quarters, perhaps, but it was to my original lodging in Bloomsbury that I drove from Waterloo. Some few belongings of mine were there, and I entertained a friendly sort of feeling for my good-hearted but slatternly landlady, and for poor, overworked Bessie, with her broad, generally smutty face, and lingering remains of a Dorset accent. The part of London with which I was familiar had resumed its normal aspect now, and people were going about their ordinary avocations very much as though England never had been invaded.

But in the north and east of the capital were streets of burned and blackened houses, and the Epping and Romford districts were one wilderness of ruins, and of graves; while across East Anglia, from the coast to the Thames, the trail of the invaders was as the track of a locust plague, but more terrible by reason of its blood-soaked trenches, its innumerable shallow graves, and its charred remains of once prosperous towns. Hundreds of ruined farmers and small landholders were working as navvies at bridge and road and railway repairs.

A great many people had been ruined during those few nightmare days of the invasion, and every man in England was burdened now with a scale of taxation never before known in the country. But business had resumed its sway, and London looked very much as ever. The need there was for a general making good, from London to the Wash, provided a great deal of employment, and the Government had taken such steps as it could to make credit easy. But Consols were still as low as sixty-eight; prices had not yet fallen to the normal level, and money was everywhere scarce.

In the middle afternoon I set out for South Kensington to see Constance Grey, to whom I had written only once during my absence, and then only to tell her of my mother's death. She had replied by telegraph, a message of warm and friendly sympathy. I knew well that she was always busy, and, like most moderns who have written professionally, I suppose we were both bad correspondents. Now there was much of which I wanted to talk with Constance, and it was with a feeling of sharp disappointment that I learned from the servant at the flat that she was not at home. Mrs. Van Homrey was in, however, and in a few moments I was with her in the little drawing-room where I had passed the night of London's exhausted sleep on Black Saturday.

"Yes, you have just missed my niece," said Mrs. Van Homrey, after a kindly reference to the strip of crepe on my arm. "She has gone in to Victoria Street to a 'conference of the powers' of John Crondall's convening. Oh, didn't you know he was here again? Yes, he arrived last week, and, as usual, is up to his neck in affairs already, and Constance with him. I verily believe that child has discovered the secret of perpetual motion."

At first mention of John Crondall's name my heart had warmed to its recollection of the man, and a pleasurable thought of meeting him again. And immediately then the warm feeling had been penetrated by a vague sense of disquiet, when Mrs. Van Homrey spoke of his affairs--"and Constance with him." But I was not then conscious of the meaning of my momentary discomfort, though, both then and afterwards, I read emphasis and meaning into Mrs. Van Homrey's coupling of the two names. I asked what the "conference" was about, but gathered that Mrs. Van Homrey was not very fully informed.

"I know they are to meet these young Canadian preachers who are so tremendously praised by the _Standard_---- What are their names, again? Tcha! How treacherous my memory grows! You know the men I mean. John Crondall met them the day after their arrival last week, and is enthusiastic about them."

I felt very much out of the movement. During the few days immediately preceding my mother's death, and since then, I had not even seen a newspaper, and, being unusually preoccupied, not only over the events of my stay at Davenham Minster, but by developments in my own thoughts, I seemed to have lost touch with current affairs.

"And what does John Crondall think of the outlook?" I asked.

"Well, I think his fear is that people in the country--outside East Anglia, of course--may fail to realize all that the invasion has meant and will mean; and that Londoners and townsfolk generally may slip back into absorption in business and in pleasure as soon as they can afford that again, and forget the fact that England is practically under Germany's heel still."

"The taxes will hardly allow them to do that, surely," I said.

"Well, I don't know. The English are a wonderful people. The invasion was so swift and sudden; the opposition to it was so comparatively trifling; surrender and peace came so soon, that really I don't know but what John is right. He generally is. You must remember that millions of the people have not seen a German soldier. They have had no discipline yet. Even here in London, as soon as the people spoke decidedly, peace followed. They did not have to strike a blow. They did not feel a blow. They were not with you and Conny, remember, at those awful trenches. Anyhow, John thinks the danger is lest they forget again, and regard the whole tragic business as a new proof of England's ability to 'muddle through' anything, without any assistance from them. Of course, England's wealth is still great, and her recuperative powers are wonderful; but John Crondall holds that, in spite of that, submission to nine years of German occupation and German tribute-paying will mean the end of the British Empire."

"And he feels that the people must be stirred into seeing that and acting on it?" I said, recalling my own thoughts during the night walk from Barebarrow.

"Yes, I suppose that is his view. But, now I come to think of it, why should you waste your time in talking to an old woman who can only give you echoes? It is only half an hour since Conny started. Why not hurry on to John Crondall's place, and join them there? He has often spoken of you, Conny tells me."

This seemed to me too good a suggestion to neglect, and ten minutes later I was on my way to St. James's Park by underground railway. I bought an evening paper on my way, and read an announcement to the effect that General Baron von Fuechter, after returning to Portsmouth from his visit to Berlin, had definitely decided that Portsmouth and Devonport could no longer remain British naval bases, and that no British sailors or soldiers in uniform could in future be admitted into any of the towns in England now occupied by Germany.

IV

THE CONFERENCE

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

A few seconds after his servant had shown me into the dining-room of John Crondall's flat, the man himself entered to me with a rush, as his manner was, both hands outstretched to welcome me.

"Good man!" he said. "I've had fine news of you from Constance Grey, and now you're here to confirm it. Splendid!"

And then, with sudden gravity, and a glance at my coat sleeve: "I heard of your loss. I know what it means. I lost my mother when I was in Port Arthur, and I know London looked different because of it when I got back. It's a big wrench; one we've all got to face."

"Yes. I think my mother died without regret; she was very tired."

There was a pause, and then I said:

"But I may have chosen my time badly, to-day. Mrs. Van Homrey said you had a conference. If you----"

"Tut, tut, man! Don't talk nonsense. I was just going to say how well you'd timed things. I don't know about a conference, but Constance is here, and Varley, and Sir Herbert Tate--he took on the secretaryship of the Army League, you know, after Gilbert chucked it--and Winchester. You know Winchester, the Australian rough-rider, who did such fine work with his bushman corps in the South African war--and--let me see! And Forbes Thompson, the great rifle clubman, you know; _and_ the Canadian preachers--splendid fellows, by Jove! Simply splendid they are, I can tell you. I look for great things from those two. Stairs is English, of course, but he's been nearly all his life in British Columbia and the Northwest, and he's got all the eternal youth, the fire and grit and enthusiasm of the Canadian, with--somehow, something else as well--good. His chum, Reynolds, is an out-and-out Canadian, born in Toronto of Canadian parents. Gad, there's solid timber in that chap, I can tell you. But, look here! Come right in, and take a hand. I'm awfully glad you came. I heard all about _The Mass_ and that; but, bless me, I can see in your eye that that's all past and done with for ever. By the way, I heard last night that your Mr. Clement Blaine had got a job after his own heart, in the pay of the Germans at Chatham--interpreter in the passport office, or some such a thing. What a man! Well, come along in, my dear chap, and give us the benefit of your wisdom."

We were leaving the room now.

"I knew you'd like Constance," he said. "She's the real thing, isn't she?"

I despised myself for the hint of chill his words brought me. What right had I to suspect or resent? And in any case John Crondall spoke in his customary frank way, with never a hint of afterthought.

"Yes," I said; "she's splendid."

"And such a head-piece, my boy. By Jove, she has a better head for business than---- Here we are, then."

Constance Grey was naturally the first to greet me in the big room where John Crondall did his work and met his friends. There was welcome in her beautiful eyes, but, obviously, Constance was very much preoccupied. Then I was presented to Sir Morell Strachey, Sir Herbert Tate, and Forbes Thompson, and then to the Canadian parson, the Rev. George Stairs. I had paid no attention to the name when Crondall had mentioned it in the other room. Now, as he named the parson again, I looked into the man's face, and----

"Mordan? Why, not Dick Mordan, of Tarn Regis?" said the parson.

"By gad! George Stairs! I was thinking of you on the side of Barebarrow the night before last."

"And I was thinking of you, Dicky Mordan, yesterday afternoon, when I met the present rector of Tarn Regis at a friend's house."

It was a long strong handshake that we exchanged. Sixteen years on the young side of thirty is a considerable stretch of time, and all that had passed since I had last seen my old Tarn Regis playmate.

Stairs introduced me to his friend, Reynolds, and I learned the curious fact that this comrade and chum of my old friend's was also a parson, but not of Stairs's church. Reynolds had qualified at a theological training college in Ontario, and had been Congregational minister in the parish of which Stairs had been vicar for the last three years.

There was a big table in the middle of the room, littered over with papers and writing materials. About this table we presently all found seats.

"Now look here, my friends," said John Crondall, "this is no time for ceremoniousness, apologies, and the rest of it, and I'm not going to indulge in any. No doubt we've all of us got special interests of our own, but there's one we all share; and it comes first with all of us, I think. We all want the same thing for England and the Empire, and we all want to do what we can to help. It's because of that I dismiss the ceremonies, and don't say anything about the fear of boring you, and all that. I don't even make exceptions of you, Stairs, or you, Reynolds. I tell you quite frankly I want to poke and pry into your plans. I want to know all about 'em. I've sense enough to see that you wield a big influence. I am certain I have your sympathy in my aims. And I want to find out how far I can make your aims help my aims. All I know is that you have addressed three meetings, each bigger than the last; and that your preaching is the real right thing. Now I want you to tell us as much as you will about your plans. You know we are all friends here."

Stairs looked at Reynolds, and Reynolds nodded at Stairs.

"Well," said the latter, smiling, first at Crondall, and then at me, "our plans are simplicity itself. In Canada we have not risen yet to the cultivation of much diplomacy. We don't understand anything of your high politics, and we don't believe in roundabout methods. For instance, I suppose here in England you don't find parsons of one denomination working in partnership much with parsons of another denomination. Well, now, when I took over from my predecessor at Kootenay, I found my friend Reynolds doing a fine work there, among the farmers and miners, as Congregational minister. He was doing precisely the work I wanted to do; but there was only one of him. Was I to fight shy of him, or set to work, as it were, in opposition to him? Well, anyhow, that didn't seem to me the way. We had our own places of worship; but, for the rest, both desiring the one thing--the Christian living of the folk in our district--we worked absolutely shoulder to shoulder. There were a few worthy folk who objected; but when Reynolds and I came to talk it over, we decided that these had as much religion as was good for them already, and that we could afford rather to ignore them, if by joint working we could rope in the folk who had next to none at all---- You must forgive my slang, Miss Grey."

Constance smiled across at the parson.

"You forget, Mr. Stairs, I grew up on the veld," she said.

"Ah, to be sure; I suppose one is as close to the earth and the realities there as in Canada."

"Quite," said Crondall. "And, anyhow, we are not doing any apologies to-day; so please go ahead."

"Well," continued George Stairs, "we often talked over Old Country affairs, Reynolds and I. Reynolds had only spent three months over here in his life, but I fancy I learned more from him than he from me."

"That's a mistake, of course," said Reynolds. "He had the facts and the knowledge. I merely supplied a fresh point of view--home-grown Canadian."

"Ah, well, we found ourselves very much in agreement, anyhow, about Home affairs and about the position of the Anglican Church in Canada; the need there is for less exclusiveness and more direct methods. The idea of coming Home and preaching through England, a kind of pilgrimage--that was entirely Reynolds's own. I would have come with him gladly, when we had our district in good going order out there. But, you see, I had no money. My friend had a little. Then my father died. He had been ailing for a long time, and I verily think the news of the invasion broke his heart. He died in the same week that it reached him, and left his two farms, with some small house property, to me.

"My father's death meant for me a considerable break. The news from England shocked me inexpressibly. It was such a terrible realization of the very fears that Reynolds and myself had so often discussed--the climax and penalty of England's mad disregard of duty; of every other consideration except pleasure, easy living, comfort, and money-making."

"This is the pivot of the whole business, that duty question," interposed Crondall. "It was your handling of that on Tuesday that burdened you with my acquaintance. I listened to that, and I said, 'Mr. George Stairs and you have got to meet, John Crondall!' But I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Well, as I say, I found myself rather at a parting of the ways, and then came my good friend here, and he said, 'What about these farms and houses of yours, Stairs? They represent an income. What are you going to do about it?' And--well, you see, that settled it. We just packed our bags and came over."

"And now that you are here?" said John Crondall.

"Well, you heard what we had to say the other afternoon?"

"I did--every word of it."

"Well, that's what we are here for. Our aim is to take that message to every man and woman in this country; and we believe God will give us zest and strength enough to bring it home to them--to make them _feel_ the truth of it. Your aim, naturally, is political and patriotic. I don't think you can have any warmer sympathizers than Reynolds and myself. But our part, as you see, is another one, and outside politics. We believe the folk at Home have lost their bearings; their compasses want adjusting. I say here what I should not venture to admit to a less sympathetic and indulgent audience: Reynolds and myself aim at arousing, by God's will, the sleeping sense of duty in our kinsmen here at Home. We have no elaborate system, no finesse, no complicated issues to consider. Our message is simply: 'You have forgotten Duty; and the Christian life is not possible while Duty remains forgotten or ignored.' Our purpose is just to give the message; to prove it; make it real; make it felt."

Crondall had been looking straight at the speaker while he listened, his face resting between his two hands, his elbows planted squarely on the table. Now he seemed to pounce down upon Stairs's last words.

"And yet you say your part is another one than ours. But why not the same? Why not the very essence and soul of our part, Stairs?"

"Gad--he's right!" said Sir Herbert Tate, in an undertone. Reynolds leaned forward in his chair, his lean, keen face alight.

"Why not the very soul of our part, Stairs--the essential first step toward our end? Our part is to urge a certain specific duty on them--a duty we reckon urgent and vital to the nation. But we can't do that unless we, or you, can first do your part--rousing them to the sense of duty--Duty itself. Man, but your part is the foundation of our part--foundation, walls, roof, corner-stone, complete! We only give the structure a name. Why, I give you my word, Stairs, that that address of yours on Tuesday was the finest piece of patriotic exhortation I ever listened to."

"But--it's very kind of you to say so; but I never mentioned King or country."

"Exactly! You gave them the root of the whole matter. You cleared a way into their hearts and heads which is open now for news of King and country. It's as though I had to collect some money for an orphanage from a people who'd never heard of charity. Before I see the people you teach 'em the meaning and beauty of charity--wake the charitable sense in them. You needn't bother mentioning orphanages; but if I come along in your rear, my chances of collecting the money are a deal rosier than if you hadn't been there first--what?"

"I see--I see," said Stairs, slowly.

"Mr. Crondall, you ought to have been a Canadian," said Reynolds, in his dry way. His use of the "Mr.," even to a man who had no hesitation in calling him plain "Reynolds," was just one of the tiny points of distinction between himself and Stairs.

"Oh, Canada has taught me something; and so have South Africa and India; and so have you and Stairs, with your mission, or pilgrimage, or whatever it is--your Message."

"Well," said Stairs, "it seems to me your view of our pilgrimage is a very kindly, and perhaps flattering one; and as I have said, your aims as a citizen of the Empire and a lover of the Old Country could not have warmer sympathizers than Reynolds and myself; but----"

"Mind, I'm not trying to turn your religious teaching to any ignoble purpose," said Crondall, quickly. "I am not asking you to introduce a single new word or thought into it for my sake."

"That's so," said Reynolds, his eye upon Stairs.

"Quite so, quite so," said Stairs. "And, of course, I am with you in all you hope for; but you know, Crondall, religion is perhaps a rather different matter to a parson from what it is to you. Forgive me if I put it clumsily, but----"

And now, greatly daring, I ventured upon an interruption, speaking upon impulse, without consideration, and hearing my voice as though it were something outside myself.

"George Stairs," I said--and I fancy the thoughts of both of us went back sixteen years--"what was it you thought about the Congregational minister when you took over your post at Kootenay? How did you decide to treat him? Did you ever regret the partnership?"

"Now if that isn't straight out Western fashion!" murmured Reynolds. Constance beamed at me from her place beside John Crondall.

"I leave it at that," said our host.

"A palpable bull's-eye," said Forbes Thompson.

I hardly needed George Stairs's friendly clap on the shoulder, nor the assurance of his:

"You are right, Dick. You have shown me my way in three words."

"Good," said Reynolds. "Well, now I don't mind saying what I wouldn't have said before, that among the notes we drew up nearly three years ago----"

"You drew up, my friend," said Stairs.

"Among the notes we drew up, I say, on this question of neglected duty, were details as to the citizen's obligations regarding the defence of his home and native land, with special reference to the callous neglect of Lord Roberts's campaign of warning and exhortation. Now, Stairs, you know as well as I do, you wrote with your own hand the passage about the Englishman's sphere of duty being as much wider than his country as Greater Britain was wider than Great Britain. You know you did."

"Oh, you can count me in, all right, Reynolds; you know I'm not one for half-measures."

"Well, now, my friends, I believe I see daylight. By joining hands I really believe we are going to accomplish something for England." Crondall looked round the table at the faces of his friends. "We are all agreed, I know, that the present danger is the danger Kipling tried to warn us about years and years ago."

"'Lest we forget!'" quoted Sir Herbert quietly.

"Exactly. There are so many in England who have neither seen nor felt anything of the blow we have had."

And here I told them something of what I had seen and heard in Dorset; how remote and unreal the whole thing was to folk there.

"That's it, exactly," continued Crondall. "That's one difficulty which has just got to be overcome. Another is the danger that, among those who did see and feel something of it, here in London, and even in East Anglia, the habit of apathy in national matters, and the calls of business and pleasure may mean forgetting, indifference--the old fatal neglect. You see, we must remember that, crushing as the blow was, it did not actually reach so very many people. It did not force them to get up and fight for their lives. It was all over so soon. Directly they cried out, 'The Destroyers' answered with surrender, and so helped to strengthen the fatal delusion they had cherished so long, that everything is a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence."

"'They'll never go for England, because England's got the dibs,'" quoted Forbes Thompson, with a nod of assent.

"Yes, yes. 'Make alliances, and leave me to my business!' One knows it all so well. But, mind you, even to the blindest of them, the invasion has meant something."

"And the income-tax will mean something to 'em, too," said Sir Morell Strachey.

"Yes. But the English purse is deep, and the Englishman has long years of money-spinning freedom from discipline behind him. Still, here is this brutal fact of the invasion. Here we are actually condemned to nine years of life inside a circle of German encampments on English soil, with a hundred millions a year of tribute to pay for the right to live in our own England. Now my notion is that the lesson must not be lost. The teaching of the thing must be forced home. It must be burnt into these happy-go-lucky countrymen of ours--if Stairs and Reynolds are to achieve their end, or we ours."

"Our aim is to awake the sense of duty which seems to us to have become atrophied, even among the professedly religious," said Stairs.

"And ours," said Crondall, sharp as steel, "is to ram home your teaching, and to show them that the nearest duty to their hand is their duty to the State, to the Race, to their children--the duty of freeing England and throwing over German dominion."

"To render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's," said Reynolds. And Stairs nodded agreement.

"Now, by my way of it, Stairs and Reynolds must succeed before we can succeed," said Crondall. "That is my view, and because that is so, you can both look to me, up till the last breath in me, for any kind of support I can give you--for any kind of support at all. But that's not all. Where you sow, I mean to reap. We both want substantially the same harvest--mine is part of yours. I know I can count on you all. You, Stairs, and you, Reynolds, are going to carry your Message through England. I propose to follow in your wake with mine. You rouse them to the sense of duty; I show them their duty. You make them ready to do their duty; I show it them. I'll have a lecturer. I'll get pictures. They shall _feel_ the invasion, and know what the German occupation means. You shall convert them, and I'll enlist them."

"Enlist them! By Jove! that's an idea," said Forbes Thompson. "A patriotic league, a league of defenders, a nation in arms."

"The Liberators!"

"Ah! Yes, the Liberators."

"Or the Patriots, simply?"

"I would enrol them just as citizens," said Crondall. "By that time they should have learned the meaning of the word."

"Yes, by Jove! it is good enough--just 'The Citizens,'" said Sir Morell Strachey.

And then a servant came in with a message for Forbes Thompson, and we realized that dinner-time had come and almost gone. But we were in no mood for separating just then, and so every one welcomed John Crondall's invitation to dine with him at a neighbouring hotel.

V

MY OWN PART

Free men freely work; Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.

E. B. BROWNING.

Constance Grey and myself were the last of John Crondall's guests to leave him on that evening of the conference. As soon as we three were alone, Constance turned to Crondall, and said:

"You must expect to have me among your camp followers if I find Aunt Mary can stand the travelling. I dare say there will be little things I can do."

"Things you can do! By George, I should think so!" said Crondall. "I shall look to you to capture the women; and if we get the women, it will surprise me if we don't get the men as well. Besides, don't you fancy I have forgotten your prowess as a speaker in Cape Town and Pretoria. You remember that meeting of your father's, when you saved him from the wrath of Vrow Bischoff? Why, of course, I reckon on you. We'll have special women's meetings."

"And where do I come in?" I asked, with an assumed lightness of tone which was far from expressing my feeling.

"Yes," said Crondall, eying me thoughtfully; "I've been thinking of that."

As he said that, I had a swift vision of myself and my record, as both must have appeared to a man like Crondall, whose whole life had been spent in patriotic effort. The vision was a good corrective for the unworthy shafts of jealousy--for that no doubt they were--which had come to me with John Crondall's references to Constance. I was admitted cordially into the confidences of these people from whom, on my record, I scarcely deserved common courtesy. It was with a distinctly chastened mind that I gave them both some outline of the thoughts and resolutions which had come to me during my evening beside Barebarrow, overlooking sleepy little Tarn Regis.

"It's a kind of national telepathy," said Crondall. "God send it's at work in other counties besides Dorset."

"It had need be," I told them; "for all those that I spoke to in Dorset accepted the German occupation like a thing as absolutely outside their purview as the movements of the planets."

"Yes, they want a lot of stirring, I know; but I believe we shall stir 'em all right. But about your part in the campaign. Of course, I recognize that every one has to earn his living, just as much now as before. But yet I know you'd like to be in this thing, Dick Mordan, and I believe you can help it a lot. What I thought of was this: I shall want a secretary, and want him very badly. He will be the man who will do half my work. On the other hand, I can't pay him much, for every cent of my income will be wanted in the campaign, and a good deal more besides. The thing is, would you tackle it, for the sake of the cause, for a couple of hundred a year? Of course, I should stand all running expenses. What do you think? It's not much of an offer, but it would keep us all together?"

Constance looked expectantly at me, and I realized with a sudden thrill the uses of even such small means as I now possessed.

"Well, no," I said; "I couldn't agree to that." The pupils of John Crondall's eyes contracted sharply, and a pained, wondering look crept into the face I loved, the vivid, expressive face of Constance Grey. "But what I would put my whole heart and soul into, would be working as your secretary for the sake of the cause, as long as you could stand the running expense, and--and longer."

I think the next minute was the happiest I had ever known. I dare say it seems a small enough matter, but it was the only thing of the kind I had ever been able to do. These friends of mine had always given so much to our country's cause. I had felt myself so far beneath them in this. Now, as John Crondall's strong hand came down on my shoulder, and Constance's bright eyes shone upon me in affectionate approval, my heart swelled within me, with something of the glad pride which should be the possession of every man, as it indubitably is of every true citizen and patriot.

"You see," I explained deprecatingly, as Crondall swayed my shoulder affectionately to and fro in his firm grip; "I have become a sort of a minor capitalist. I have about a hundred and fifty a year coming in, and so I'm as free as I am glad to work with you, and--there'll be two hundred more for the campaign, you see."

"God bless you, old chap! You and Constance and I, we'll move mountains--even the great mountain of apathy--between us. Sir Herbert offers a thousand pounds toward expenses, and Forbes Thompson and Varley are ready to speak for us anywhere we like, and Winchester has a pal who he says will work wonders as a kind of advance agent. I'm pretty sure of Government help, too--or Opposition help; they'll be governing before Christmas, you'll find. Now, we all meet here again the day after to-morrow. We three will see each other to-morrow, I expect. I must write a stack of letters before the midnight post."

"Well, can I lend a hand?" I asked.

"No, not to-night, Mr. Secretary Dick, thank you! But it's late. Will you take Constance home? I'll get my fellow to whistle up a cab."

Ten minutes earlier I should have been chilled by his implied guardianship of Constance; but now I had that within which warmed me through and through: the most effectual kind of protection against chill. So all was settled, and we left John Crondall to his letters. And, driving out to South Kensington, we talked over our hopes, Constance and I, as partners in one cause.

"This is the beginning of everything for me, Constance," I said, when we parted in the hall below her flat.

"It is going to be the beginning of very much for a good many," she said, as she gave me her hand.

"I wonder if you know how much--for me!"

"I think so. I am tremendously glad about it all."

But she did not know, could not know, just how much it meant to me.

"Good night, my patriotic Muse!" I said.

"Good night, Mr. Secretary Dick!"

And so we parted on the night of my return to London.

VI

PREPARATIONS

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down. Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power, with the Need, Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.

. . . . .

Follow after--follow after--for the harvest is sown: By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!

RUDYARD KIPLING.

Never before had I known days so full, so compact of effort and achievement, as were those of the week following the conference in John Crondall's rooms. I could well appreciate Winchester's statement when he said that: "John Crondall is known through three Continents as a glutton for work."

Our little circle represented Canada, South Africa, Australia, and the Mother Country; and, while I admit that my old friend, George Stairs, and his Canadian-born partner, Reynolds, could give points to most people in the matter of unwearying energy, yet I am proud to report that the member of our circle who, so to say, worked us all to a standstill was John Crondall, an Englishman born and bred. I said as much in the presence of them all, and when my verdict was generally endorsed, John Crondall qualified it with the remark:

"Well, I can only say that pretty nearly all I know about work I learned in the Colonies."

And I learned later on to realize the justice of this qualification. Colonial life does teach directness and concentration. Action of any sort in England was at that time hedged about by innumerable complications and cross issues and formalities, many of which we have won clear from since then. Perhaps it was the strength of our Colonial support which set the pace of our procedure. Whatever the cause, I know I never worked harder, or accomplished more; and I had never been so happy.

I think John Crondall must have interviewed from two to three hundred prominent politicians and members of the official world during that week. I have heard it said by men who should know, that the money Crondall spent in cable messages to the Colonies that week was the price of the first Imperial Parliament ever assembled in Westminster Hall. I use these words in their true sense, their modern sense, of course. Nominally, the House of Commons had long been the "Imperial" Parliament.

I know that week's work established _The Citizens_ as an already powerful organization, with a long list of names famous in history among its members, with a substantial banking account, and with volunteer agents in every great centre in the kingdom. The motto and watchword of _The Citizens_, as engraved upon a little bronze medal of membership, was: "For God; our Race; and Duty." The oath of enrolment said:

"I ---- do hereby undertake and promise to do my duty to God, to our Race, and to the British Empire to the utmost limit of my ability, without fear and without compromise, so help me God!"

John Crondall interviewed the editors of most of the leading London newspapers during that week, and thereby earned a discreet measure of journalistic support for his campaign. There was a great need of discretion here, for our papers were carefully studied in Berlin, as well as by the German Generals commanding the various English towns now occupied by the Kaiser's troops. It was, of course, most important that no friction should be caused at this stage.

But it was with regard to the preaching pilgrimage of the two Canadian parsons that Crondall's friends of the Press rendered us the greatest possible service. Here no particular reticence was called for, and the Press could be, and was, unreservedly helpful and generous. In estimating the marvellous achievements of the two preachers, I do not think enough weight has been attached to the great services rendered to their mission by such journals as the great London daily which published each morning a column headed, "The New Evangel," and, indeed, by all the newspapers both in London and the provinces.

We were not directly aiming, during that first week, at enrolling members. No recruiting had been done. Yet when, at the end of the week, a meeting of the executive committee was held at the Westminster Palace Hotel, the founder, John Crondall, was able to submit a list of close upon six hundred sworn members of _The Citizens_; and, of these, I suppose fully five hundred were men of high standing in the world of politics, the Services, commerce, and the professions. Among them were three dukes, twenty-three peers, a Field Marshal, six newspaper proprietors, eleven editors, seven of the wealthiest men in England, and ninety-eight prominent Members of Parliament. And, as I say, no systematic recruiting had been done.

At that meeting of the executive a great deal of important business was transacted. John Crondall was able to announce a credit balance of ten thousand pounds, with powers to overdraw under guarantee at the Bank of England. A simple code of membership rules and objects was drawn up for publication, and a short code of secret rules was formed, by which every sworn member was to be bound. These rules stipulated for implicit obedience to the decision and orders of the executive, and by these every member was bound to take a certain course of rifle drill, and to respond immediately to any call that should be made for military service within the British Isles during a period of twelve months from the date of enrolment. John Crondall announced that there was every hope of _The Citizens_ obtaining from the Government a grant of one service rifle and one hundred rounds of ammunition for every member who could pass a simple medical examination.

"We may not actually secure this grant until after the general election," Crondall explained; "but it can be regarded as a certain asset."

It was decided that, officially, there should be no connection between the Canadian preachers, as every one called them, and the propaganda of _The Citizens_. But it was also privately agreed that steps should be taken to follow the Canadians throughout their pilgrimage with lectures and addresses, and meetings at which members could be enrolled upon the roster of _The Citizens_, including volunteer instructors in rifle drill. My friend Stairs attended this meeting with Reynolds, and, after discussion, it was agreed that, for the present, they should not visit the towns occupied by the Germans.

"The people there have their lesson before them every day and all day long," said John Crondall. "The folk we want to reach are those who have not yet learned their lesson. My advice is to attack London first. Enlist London on your side, and on that go to the provinces."

There was a good deal of discussion over this, and finally an offer John Crondall made was accepted by Stairs and Reynolds, and our meeting was brought to a close. What Crondall said was this:

"To-day is Monday. There is still a great deal of detail to be attended to. Officially, there must be no connection between Stairs and Reynolds and _The Citizens_. Actually, we know the connection is vital. Give me the rest of this week for arrangements, and I promise that we shall all gain by it. I will not appear in the matter, and I will see you each evening for consultation. Your pilgrimage shall begin on Sunday, and ours within a day or so of that."

Then followed another week of tense effort. Stairs and Reynolds both addressed minor gatherings during the week, and met John Crondall every evening for consultation. On Wednesday the principal Imperialistic newspaper in London appeared with a long leading article and three columns of descriptive exposition of "The New Evangel." On the same day the papers published despatches telling of the departure from their various homes of the Premiers, and two specially elected representatives of all the British Colonies, who were coming to England for an Imperial Conference at Westminster. The Government's resignation was expected within the month, and writs for the election were to be issued immediately afterwards.

On Wednesday evening and Thursday morning the newspapers of London alone published one hundred and thirteen columns of matter regarding the message and the pilgrimage of the Rev. George Stairs and the Rev. Arthur J. Reynolds. During the latter part of the week all London was agog over the Canadian preachers. As yet, very little had appeared in print regarding _The Citizens_.

On Sunday morning at three o'clock John Crondall went into his bedroom to sleep, and I slept in the room he had set aside for me in his flat--too tired out to undress. Even Crondall's iron frame was weary that night, and he admitted to me before retiring from a table at which we had kept three typewriters busy till long after midnight, that he had reached his limit and must rest.

"I couldn't stand another hour of it--unless it were necessary, you know," was his way of putting it.

By my persuasion he kept his bed during a good slice of Sunday morning, and lunched with me at Constance Grey's flat. He always said that Mrs. Van Homrey was the most restful tonic London could supply to any man. I went to the morning service at Westminster Abbey that day with Constance, and listened to a magnificent sermon from the Bishop of London, whose text was drawn from the sixth chapter of Exodus: "And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God."

The Bishop struck a strong note of hopefulness, but there was also warning and exhortation in his discourse. He spoke of sons of our race who had gone into far countries, and, carrying our Faith and traditions with them, had preserved these and wrought them into a finer fabric than the original from which they were drawn. And now, when a great affliction had come upon the people of England, their sons of the Greater Britain oversea were holding out kindly hands of friendship and support. But it was not alone in the material sense that we should do well to avail ourselves of the support offered us from the outside places. These wandering children of the Old Land had cherished among them a strong and simple godliness, a devout habit of Christian morality, from which we might well draw spiritual sustenance.

"You have all heard of the Canadian preachers, and I hope you will all learn a good deal more of their Message this very afternoon at the Albert Hall, where I am to have the honour of presiding over a meeting which will be addressed by these Christian workers from across the sea."

We found John Crondall a giant refreshed after his long sleep.

"I definitely promise you a seat this afternoon, Mrs. Van Homrey," he said, as we all sat down to lunch in the South Kensington flat, "but that's as much as I can promise. You and I will have to keep our feet, Dick, and you will have to share Lady Tate's seat, Constance. If every ticket-holder turns up this afternoon, there won't be a single vacant seat in the whole of that great hall."

"You earned your Sunday morning in, John," said Mrs. Van Homrey. "Is the Prime Minister coming?"

"No, he has failed me at the last, but half the members of the last Government will be there, and I have promises from prominent representatives of every religious denomination in England. There will be sixty military officers above captain's rank, in uniform, and forty-eight naval officers in uniform. There will be many scores of bluejackets and private soldiers, a hundred training-ship lads, fifty of the Legion of Frontiersmen, and a number of volunteers all in full uniform. There will be a tremendous number of society people, but the mass will be leavened, and I should say one-half the people will be middle-class folk. For to-night, no tickets have been issued. The attendance will depend to some extent on the success of this afternoon, but, to judge from the newspapers and the talk one hears, I should say it would be enormous."

Just before we left the flat Crondall told us a secret.

"You know they have a volunteer choir of fifty voices?" he said. "It was Stairs's idea, and he has carried it out alone. The choir consists entirely of bluejackets, soldiers, volunteers, Red Cross nurses, and boys from the Army bands."

VII

THE SWORD OF THE LORD

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove; Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations dost set free, And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

WORDSWORTH'S _Ode to Duty_.

I have always been glad that I was able to attend that first great service of the Canadian preachers; and so, I think, has every one else who was there. Other services of theirs may have been more notable in certain respects--indeed, I know they were; but this one was the beginning, the first wave in a great tide. And I am glad that I was there to see that first grand wave rise upon the rock of British apathy.

I have said something of the audience, but a book might well be devoted to its description, and, again, a sentence may serve. It was a representative English gathering, in that it embraced a member of the Royal Family, a little group of old men and women from an asylum for the indigent, and members of every grade of society that comes between. Also, it was a very large gathering--even for the Albert Hall.

It should be remembered that not many weeks prior to this Sunday afternoon, the people of London, maddened by hunger, fear, and bewildered panic, had stormed Westminster to enforce their demand for surrender, and had seen Von Fuechter with his bloodstained legions take possession of the capital of the British Empire. Fifty Londoners had been cut down, almost in as many seconds, within two miles of the Mansion House. In one terrible week London had passed through an age of terror and humiliation, the end of which had been purchased in panic and disorder by means of a greater humiliation than any. Now England had to pay the bill. Some, in the pursuit of business and pleasure, were already forgetting; but the majority among the great concourse of Londoners who sat waiting in the Albert Hall that afternoon, clothed in their Sunday best, were still shrewdly conscious of the terrible severity of the blow which had fallen upon England.

Having found Constance her half-seat with Lady Tate, I stood beside one of the gangways below the platform, which lead to the dressing-rooms and other offices. Beside me was a table for Press representatives. There, with their pencils, I noted Campbell, of the _Daily Gazette_, and other men I knew, including Carew, for the _Standard_, who had an assistant with him. He told me that somewhere in the hall his paper had a special descriptive writer as well.

Looking up and down that vast building, from dome to amphitheatre, I experienced, as it were vicariously, something of the nervousness of stage fright. Londoners were not simple prairie folk, I thought. How should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the most blase people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers speak in public, but--I looked out over that assemblage, and I was horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a Nonconformist minister from Canada, and I told myself they had never had so much as an elocution lesson between them!

And then the Bishop of London appeared on the crowded platform, followed by George Stairs and Arthur Reynolds; and a dead silence descended upon the hall. In the forefront of the platform was a plain table with a chair at either end of it, and a larger one in the middle. Here the Bishop and the two preachers placed themselves. Then the Bishop rose with right hand uplifted, and said solemnly:

"May God bless to us all the Message which His two servants have brought us from oversea; for Christ's sake, Amen."

George Stairs remained kneeling at his end of the table. But as the Bishop resumed his seat Arthur Reynolds stepped forward, and, pitching his voice well, said:

"My friends, let us sing the British Anthem."

And at that the great organ spoke, and the choir of sailors, soldiers, and nurses led the singing of the National Anthem. The first bar was sung by the choir alone, but by the time the third bar was reached thousands among the standing congregation were singing with them, and the volume of sound was most impressive. I think that a good many people besides myself found this solemn singing of the Anthem, from its first line to its last, something of a revelation. It made "God Save the King" a real prayer instead of a musical intimation that hats might be felt for and carriages ordered. It struck a note which the Canadian preachers desired to strike. They began with a National Hymn which was a prayer for King and Country. The people were at first startled, and then pleased, and then stirred by a departure from all customs known to them. And that this should be so was, I apprehend, the deliberate intention of the Canadian preachers.

Still George Stairs knelt at his end of the bare table.

As the last note of the organ accompaniment died away, Arthur Reynolds stepped to the front.

"Will you all pray, please?" he said. He closed his eyes and extended one hand.

I cannot tell you what simple magic the man used. I know those were his words. But the compelling appeal in them was most remarkable. There was something childlike about his simple request. I do not think any one could have scoffed at the man. After a minute's silence, he prayed aloud, and this is what he said:

"Father in Heaven, give us strength to understand our duty and to do it. Thou knowest that two of the least among Thy servants have crossed the sea to give a Message to their kinsmen in England. Our kinsmen are a great and proud people, and we, as Thou knowest, are but very simple men. But our Message is from Thee, and with Thee all things are possible. Father, have pity upon our weakness to-day. Open to us the hearts of even the proudest and the greatest of our kinsmen. Do not let them scorn us. And, O Father of all men, gentle and simple, breathe Thou upon us that we may have a strength not of ourselves; a power worthy of the Message we bring, which shall make its truth to shine so that none may mistake it. For Christ's sake. Amen."

Arthur Reynolds resumed his seat, and a great Australian singer, a _prima donna_ of world-wide repute, stepped forward very simply and sang as a solo the hymn beginning:

Church of the Living God, Pillar and ground of truth, Keep the old paths the fathers trod In thy illumined youth.

The prayer had softened all hearts by its simplicity, its humility. The exquisitely rendered hymn attuned all minds to thoughts of ancient, simple piety, and the traditions which guided and inspired our race in the past. When it was ended, and not till then, George Stairs rose from his knees, and stepped forward to where a little temporary extension jutted out beyond the rest of the platform. He stood there with both hands by his side, and a Bible held in one of them. His head inclined a little forward. It was an attitude suggestive rather of submission to that great assembly, or to some Power above it, than of exhortation. Watching him as he stood there, I realized what a fine figure of a man George was, how well and surely Canadian life had developed him. His head was massive, his hair thick and very fair; his form lithe, tall, full of muscular elasticity.

He stood so, silent, for a full minute, till I began to catch my breath from nervousness. Then he opened the Bible, and:

"May I just read you a few verses from the Bible?" he said.

There was the same directness, the same simple, almost childlike appeal that had touched the people in Reynolds's prayer. He read some verses from the First Book of Samuel. I remember:

"'And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon mine altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? And did I give unto the house of thy father all the offerings made by fire of the children of Israel? Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation; and honouredst thy sons above me to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel, my people? Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house and the house of thy father should walk before me for ever; but now the Lord saith, be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and them that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold the day is come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house, and there shall not be an old man in my house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give Israel.... And I will raise me up a faithful priest, that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my mind....'"

There was a pause, and then the preacher read a passage from Judges, ending with the famous war-cry: "The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon." He looked up then, and, without reference to the Bible in his hand, repeated several verses:

"'And by thy sword thou shalt live, and shalt serve thy brother: and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.'

"'He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.'

"'For he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.'

"'And take the helmet of salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.'

"'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace but a sword.' Not the peace of indolence and dishonour; not the fatted peace of mercenary well-being; but a Sword; the Sword of the Lord, the Sword of Duty, which creates, establishes, and safeguards the only true peace--the peace of honourable peoples."

I remember his slow turning of leaves in his Bible, and I remember:

"'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man--' the whole duty---- Yes, 'but isn't Duty rather an early Victorian sort of business, and a bit out of date, anyhow?' That was what a young countryman of mine--from Dorset, he came--said to me in Calgary, last year. I told him that, according to my reading of history, it had come down a little farther than early Victorian days. I remember I mentioned Rorke's Drift; and he rather liked that. But, of course, I knew what he meant."

It was in this very simple strain, without a gesture, without a trace of dramatic appeal, that George Stairs began to address that great gathering. Much has been said and written of the quality of revelation which was instinct in that first address; of its compelling force, its inspired strength, the convincing directness of it all. And I should be the last to deny to my old friend's address any of the praises lavished upon it by high and low. But what I would say of it is that, even now, sufficient emphasis and import are never attached to the most compelling quality of all in George Stairs's words: their absolutely unaffected simplicity. I think a ten-year-old child could have followed his every word with perfect understanding.

Nowadays we take a fair measure of simplicity for granted. Anything less would condemn a man as a fool or a mountebank. But be it remembered that the key-note and most striking feature of all recent progress has been the advance toward simplicity in all things. At the period of George Stairs's first exposition of the new evangel in the Albert Hall, we were not greatly given to simplicity. It was scarcely noticeable at that time even among tillers of the earth. Not to put too fine a point upon it, we were a tinselled lot of mimes, greatly given to apishness, and shunning naked truth as though it were the plague. Past masters in compromise and self-delusion, we had stripped ourselves of simplicity in every detail of life, and, from the cradle to the grave, seemed willingly to be hedged about with every kind of complexity. We so maltreated our physical palates that they responded only to flavours which would have alarmed a plain-living man; and, metaphorically, the same thing held good in every concern of our lives, until simplicity became non-existent among us, and was forgotten. There were men and women in that Sunday afternoon gathering at the Albert Hall whose very pleasures were a complicated and laborious art, whose pastimes were a strain upon the nervous system, whose leisure was quite an arduous business.

This it was which gave such striking freshness, such compelling strength, to the simple, forthright directness, the unaffected earnestness and modesty of the Message brought us by the Canadian preachers. The most bumptious and self-satisfied Cockney who ever heard the ringing of Bow Bells, would have found resentment impossible after George Stairs's little account of his leaving Dorset as a boy of twelve, and picking up such education as he had, while learning how to milk cows, bed down horses, split fire-wood, and perform "chores" generally, on a Canadian farm. Even during his theological course, vacations had found him in the harvest field.

"You may guess my diffidence, then," he said, "in lifting up my voice before such a gathering as this, here in the storied heart of the Empire, the city I have reverenced my life long as the centre of the world's intelligence. But there is not a man or woman here to-day who would chide a lad who came home from school with tidings of something he had learned there. That is my case, precisely. I have been to one of our outside schools, from my home here in this beloved island. Home and school alike, they are all part of our family heritage--yours and mine. I only bring you your own word from another part of our own place. That is my sole claim to stand before you to-day. Yet, when I think of it, it satisfies me; it safeguards me from the effect of misunderstanding or offence, so long as my hearers are of my kin--British."

His description of Canada and the life he had lived there occupied us for no more than ten minutes, at the outside. It has appeared in so many books that I will not attempt to quote that little masterpiece of illumination. But by no means every reproduction of this passage adds the simple little statement which divided it from its successor.

"That has been my life. No brilliant qualities are demanded of a man in such a life. The one thing demanded is that he shall do his duty. You remember that passage in Ecclesiastes--'The conclusion of the whole matter'?"

And then came the story of Edward Hare. That moved the people deeply.

"My first curacy was in Southern Manitoba. When I was walking from the church to the farmhouse where I lodged, after morning service, one perfect day in June, I passed a man called Edward Hare, sitting at the edge of a little bluff, on a rising piece of ground. I had felt drawn toward this man. He was a Londoner, and, in his first two years, had had a tough fight. But he had won through, and now had just succeeded in adding a hundred and sixty acres to his little farm, which was one of the most prosperous in the district.

"'I didn't see you at church this morning, Hare,' I said, after we had chatted a minute or two.

"'No,' said he; 'I wasn't at church. I've been here by this bluff since breakfast, and--Parson!' he said, with sudden emphasis, 'I shall give up the farm. I'm going back Home.'

"Well, of course, I was surprised, and pressed him for reasons. 'Well,' he said, 'I don't know as I can make much of a show of reasons; but I'm going. Did you notice anything special about the weather, or--or that, this morning, Parson?' I told him I had only noticed that it was a very sweet, clear, happy sort of a morning. 'That's just it, Parson,' he said; 'sweet and clear and clean it is; and I don't believe there's any sweeter, cleaner thing than this morning on my farm--no, not in heaven, Parson,' he said. 'And that's why I'm going back Home to London; to Battersea; that's where I lived before I came here.'

"I waited for him to tell me more, and presently he said: 'You know, Parson, I was never what you might call a drunkard, not even at Home, where drinking's the regular thing. But I used to get through a tidy lot of liquor, one way and another, and most generally two or three pints too many of a Saturday night. Then, of a Sunday morning, the job was waiting for the pubs to open. Nobody in our street ever did much else of a Sunday. I suppose you don't happen to have ever been down the Falcon Road of a Sunday morning, Parson? No? Well, you see, the street's a kind of market all Saturday night, up till long after midnight--costers' barrows with flare-lights, gin-shops full to the door, and all the fun of the fair--all the fun of the fair. Mothers and fathers, lads and sweethearts, babies in prams, and toddlers in blue plush and white wool; you see them all crowding the bars up till midnight, and they see--well, they see Battersea through a kind of a bright gaze. Then comes Sunday, and a dry throat, and waiting for the pubs to open. The streets are all a litter of dirty newspaper and cabbage-stumps, and worse; and the air's kind of sick and stale.'

"At that Hare stopped talking, and looked out over the prairie on that June morning. Presently he went on again: 'Well, Parson, when I came out here this morning--I haven't tasted beer for over three years--I sat down and looked around; and, somehow, I thought I'd never seen anything so fine in all my life; so sweet and clean; the air so bright, like dew; and green--well, look at it, far as your eye can carry! And all this round, away to the bluff there, and the creek this way; it's mine, every foot of it. Well, after a bit, I was looking over there to the church, and what d'ye think I saw, all through the pretty sunlight? I saw the Falcon Road, a pub I know there, and a streak of sunshine running over the wire blinds into the bar, all frowsy and shut in, with the liquor stains over everything. And outside, I saw the pasty-faced crowd waiting to get in, and all the Sunday litter in the road. Parson, I got the smell of it, the sick, stale smell of it, right here--in Paradise; I got the frowsy smell of it, and heard the waily children squabbling, and--I can't tell you any more of what I saw. If you'd ever seen it, you'd know.'

"And there he stopped again, until I moved. Then he said: 'Parson, if you saw a fellow starving on a bit of land over there that wouldn't feed a prairie-chick, and you knew of a free homestead across the creek, where he could raise five and twenty bushels to the acre and live like a man, would you leave him to rot on his bare patch? Not you. That's why I'm going Home--to Battersea.'

"If Hare had been a married man I might have advised him otherwise. But he was married only to the farm he had wrought so well, and it did not seem to me part of my business to come between a man and his duty--as he saw it. That man came Home, and took the cheapest lodging he could get in Battersea. He had sold his farm well. Now he took to street preaching, and what he preached was, not religion, but the prairie. 'Lord sake, young folk!' he used to say to the lads and girls when they turned toward the public-houses. 'Hold on! Wait a minute! I want to tell you something!' And he would tell them what four years' clean work had given him in Canada.

"He got into touch with various emigration agencies. The money he had lasted him, living as he did, for five years. In that time he was the means of sending nine hundred and twenty men and five hundred and forty women and girls to a free and independent life in Canada. Just before his money was exhausted, England's affliction, England's chastisement, came upon her like God's anger in a thunderbolt. Hare had meant to return to Canada to make another start, and earn money enough to return to his work here. Instead of that, my friends, instead of what he called Paradise in Manitoba, God took him straight into Heaven. He left his body beside the North London entrenchments, where, so one of his comrades told me, he fought like ten men for England, knowing well that, if captured, he would be shot out of hand as a civilian bearing arms. One may say of Edward Hare, I think, that he saw his duty very clearly--and did it.

* * * * *

"But what of us? What of you, and I, my friends? How do we stand regarding Duty?"

I never heard such questions in my life. He had been speaking smoothly, evenly, calmly, and without gesticulation. With the questions, his body was bent as though for a leap; his hands flung forward. These questions left him like bullets. It was as though that great hall had been in blackest darkness, and with a sudden movement the speaker had switched on ten thousand electric lights. I saw men rise to a half-erect posture. I heard women catch their breath. The air of the place seemed all aquiver.

"My friends, will you please pray with me?"

He leaned forward, an appeal in every line of his figure, addressed confidentially to each soul present. Then his right hand rose:

"Please God, help me to give my Message! Please God, open London's heart to hear my Message! Please God, give me strength to tell it--now! For Christ's sake. Amen!"

One heard a low, emphatic, and far-carrying "Amen!" from the lips of London's Bishop; and I think that, too, meant something to the great congregation of Londoners assembled there.

Immediately then, it was, while the electric thrill of his questions and the simple prayer still held all his audience at high tension, that George Stairs plunged into the famous declaration of the new evangel of Duty and Simplicity. If any man in the world has learned for himself that prayer is efficacious, that man is the Rev. George Stairs. For it is now universally admitted that such winged words as those of his first great exposition of the doctrine of Duty and simple living, the doctrine which has placed the English-speaking peoples in the forefront of Christendom, had never before thrilled an English audience.

His own words were a perfect example of the invincible virtue of simplicity; his presence there was a glowing evidence of the force of Duty. It is quite certain that the knowledge shown in his flashing summary of nineteenth-century English history was not knowledge based upon experience. But neither the poets, nor the most learned historians, nor the most erudite of naval experts, has ever given a picture so instantly convincing as the famous passage of his oration which showed us, first, the British Fleet on the morning of Trafalgar; then, Nelson going into action; then, the great sailor's dying apotheosis of Duty; and, finally, England's reception of her dead hero's body. The delivery of this much-quoted passage was a matter of moments only, but from where I stood I saw streaming eyes in women's faces, and that stiff, unwinking stare on men's faces which indicates tense effort to restrain emotion.

And so, with a fine directness and simplicity of progress, he carried us down through the century to its stormy close, with vivid words of tribute for the sturdy pioneers of Victorian reform who fought for and built the freest democracy in the world, and gave us the triumphant enlightenment which illumined Victoria's first Jubilee.

"'But isn't Duty a rather early Victorian sort of business, and out of date, anyhow?' said my young countryman in Calgary. To the first half of his question there can be no answer but 'Yes.' To deny it were to slander our fathers most cruelly. But what of the question's second half? Our fathers have no concern with the answering of that. Is Duty 'out of date,' my friends? If so, let us burn our churches. If so, let the bishops resign their bishoprics. If so, let us lower for ever the flag which our fathers made sacred from pole to pole. If so, let Britain admit--as well first as last--that she has retired for ever from her proud place among the nations, and is no more to be accounted a Power in Christendom; for that is no place for a people with whom Duty is out of date.

"'And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon mine altar?... But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me, for them that honour me I will honour, and them that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. _Behold the days come that I will cut off thine arm!_'"

It was almost unbearable. No one had guessed the man had such a voice. He had recited that passage quietly. Then came the rolling thunder of the: "Behold the days come that I will cut off thine arm!" A woman in the centre of the hall cried aloud, upon a high note. The roar of German artillery in North London never stirred Londoners as this particular sentence of God's Word stirred them in the Albert Hall.

And then, in a voice keyed down again to calm and tender wisdom, the words of the Scriptural poet stole out over the heads of the perturbed people, stilling their minds once more into the right receptive vein: "'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.'"

Like balm, the stately words fell upon the people, as a light to lighten their darkness, as an end and a solution to a situation found intolerable. But, though calm resolve was in George Stairs's gift that day, he suffered no complaisance; and, by this time, he held that great assembly in the hollow of his hand. It was then he dealt with the character of our own century, as distinguished from that of the Victorian era. It was then his words taught me, personally, more than all he had said besides.

I will not quote from a passage which has been incorporated in hundreds of school-books. It is generally admitted that the end and purpose underlying the civil and national code of our age has never since been more admirably stated than on the day of its first enunciation in the Albert Hall by George Stairs. His words were glowing when he showed us how the key-note of our fathers' age had been the claiming and establishing of rights and privileges. His words stung like whip-thongs when he depicted our greedy, self-satisfied enjoyment of those rights and privileges, with never a thought, either of the various obligations pertaining to them, or of our plain duty in the conservation for our children of all that had been won for us. Finally, his words were living fire of incentive, red wine of stimulation, when he urged upon us the twentieth-century watchword of Duty, and the loyal discharge of obligations.

"Theirs, an age crowned by well-won triumph, was the century of claimant demand; ours is the century of grateful obedience. Theirs was the age of claims; ours the age of Duty. Theirs the century of rights; ours the century of Duty. Theirs the period of brave, insistent constructive effort; ours the period of Duty--Duty--Duty!

"In fighting to obtain all that they won for us, our fathers pledged themselves--and us--to be fit recipients, true freemen. For a moment, misled by the glare of wealth and pleasure, we have played the caitiff's part; grasped freemen's privileges, without thanks, and with repudiation of the balancing duties and obligations without which no rights can survive. And--'Behold, the days come that I will cut off thine arm!'

"The God of our fathers trusted them, in our behalf; and we played traitor. So God smote England, through the arrogant war-lords of another people. That blow, self-administered, is Heaven's last warning to England. In truth, the blow was ours, yours and mine; we ourselves it was who played the traitor and struck a cruel blow at Britain's heart. Unworthy sons of valiant sires, we snatched our wages and shirked our work; seized the reward and refused the duty. God in His mercy gave us many warnings; but we hid our faces and pursued our selfish ends. 'Behold, the days come----'

"But God stayed His hand. England lies bloody but unbroken. There can be no more warnings. The time for warnings has gone by. There can be no more paltering. Now is the day of final choice. Will ye be men--or helots and outcasts? Will you choose Duty, and the favour of God's appointed way for us, of progress and of leadership; or will you choose--pleasure, swift decay, annihilation? Upon your heads be it! Our fathers nobly did their part. Upon your choice hangs the future of our race, the fate of your children, the destiny of God's chosen people, who have paltered with strange gods, blasphemed the true faith, and stepped aside from the white path--the Only Way: Duty!"

He turned, raising one hand, and the notes of the great organ rose and swelled mightily, filling the hall with the strains of the British National Anthem. Every soul in the building stood erect, and following the choir's lead, that great gathering sang the British hymn as it was never sung before. As the last note throbbed into silence in the hall's dome, George Stairs, who had knelt through the singing of the anthem, advanced, with hand uplifted.

"God helping us, as, if we choose aright, He surely will help us, do we choose Duty, or pleasure? Choose, my kinsmen! Is it Duty, or is it pleasure?"

It was a severe test to put to such an assembly, to a congregation of all classes of London society. There was a moment of silence in which I saw George Stairs's face, white and writhen, through a mist which seemed to cloud my vision. And then the answer came, like a long, rolling clap of thunder:

"Duty!"

And I saw George Stairs fall upon his knees in prayer, as the Bishop dismissed the people with a benediction, delivered somewhat brokenly, in a hoarse voice.

VIII

THE PREACHERS

There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who in love and truth Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad hearts! without reproach or blot, Who do thy work, and know it not: O! if through confidence misplaced They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.

_Ode to Duty._

It was with something of a shock that I learned, while endeavouring to make my way through a dense crowd to the Canadian preacher's dressing-room, that my friend, George Stairs, was lying unconscious in a fainting fit. But my anxiety was not long-lived. Several doctors had volunteered their services, and from one of them I learned that the fainting fit was no more than the momentary result of an exceptional strain of excitement.

Within half an hour, Stairs and Reynolds were both resting comfortably in a private sitting-room at a neighbouring hotel, and there I visited them, with Constance Grey and Mrs. Van Homrey, and John Crondall. Stairs assured us that his fainting was of no consequence, and that he felt perfectly fit and well again.

"You see it was something of an ordeal for me, a nobody from nowhere, to face such an assembly."

"Well," said John Crondall, "I suppose that at this moment there is not a man in London who is much more a somebody, and less a nobody from nowhere."

"You think we succeeded, then?"

"My dear fellow! I think your address of this afternoon was the most important event England has known this century. Mark my words, that great thunder of 'Duty!' that you drew from them--from a London audience, mind--is to have more far-reaching results for the British Empire than the acquisition of a continent."

"No, no, my dear Crondall, you surely overrate the thing," said Stairs, warm colour spreading over his pale face.

"Well, you can take my deliberate assurance that in my opinion you achieved more for your country this afternoon than it has been my good fortune to achieve in the whole of a rather busy life."

Stairs protested, blushing like a girl. But we know now that, so far at all events as his remarks were prophetic, John Crondall was absolutely right; though whether or not the new evangel could have achieved what it did without the invasion is another matter.

Myself, I believe nothing could have been more triumphantly successful, more pregnant with great possibilities for good, than the event of that afternoon. Yet I was assured that fully two thousand five hundred more people crowded into the hall for the evening service than had been there to hear Stairs's address. And I had thought the huge place crowded in the afternoon. As before, the service began and ended with the National Anthem; but in the evening the great assembly was thrilled to its heart by the Australian _prima donna's_ splendid singing of Wordsworth's _Ode to Duty_ in the setting specially composed for this occasion by Doctor Elgar.

I saw very many faces that I had seen at the first service, but I believe that there was a far greater proportion of poorer folk present than there had been in the afternoon. The President of the Congregational Union presided, and the address was delivered by Arthur Reynolds.

As with Stairs, so with Reynolds, Duty was the gist and heart of the Message delivered--Duty, plain living, simplicity; these they both urged to be the root of the whole matter. Both men gave substantially the same Message, there can be no doubt of that; but there were differences, and upon the whole I am inclined to think that Reynolds's address was more perfectly adapted to his hearers than Stairs's would have been if his had been given that evening. Reynolds's diction in public speaking was not quite his conversational speech, because nothing like slang, nothing altogether colloquial crept into it, but its simplicity was notable; it was the diction of a frank, earnest child. There were none of the stereotyped phrases of piety; yet I never heard a more truly pious and deeply religious discourse.

The social and political aspects of Duty were more cursorily treated by Reynolds than its moral and religious aspect. There was nothing heterodox in the view put forward by this preacher from oversea. A man may find salvation in this world and the next through love and faith, he said in effect; but the love and faith must be of the right sort. The redemption of the world was the world's greatest miracle; but it did not offer mankind salvation in return for a given measure of psalm-singing, sentimentalizing, and prayerful prostrations. Christianity was something which had to be lived, not merely contemplated. Love and faith were all-sufficient, but they must be the true love and faith, of which Duty was the legitimate offspring. The man who thought that any form of piety which permitted the neglect of Duty, would win him either true peace in this life or salvation in the next, was as pitifully misled as the man who indulged himself in a vicious life with a view to repentance when he should be too near his demise to care for indulgence.

"But, even if one could put aside all thought of God and the life compared with which this life is but an instant of time; even then there would be nothing left really worth serious consideration besides Duty. Dear friends, you who listen so kindly to the man who comes to you from across the sea, I ask you to look about you in the streets and among the people you know, and to tell me if the majority are really happy. In this connection I dare not speak of the land of my birth, because, though it is yours as truly as it is mine, and we are all blood-brothers, yet I might be thought guilty of a vain partiality. But I do say that I cannot think the majority of the people of England are really happy. I do not believe the majority of Londoners are happy. I am sure that the majority of those who spend an immense amount of money here in the West End of London, are not one whit happier than the average man who works hard for a few pounds a week.

"If I am certain of anything in this world, I am certain that the pursuit of pleasure never yet brought real happiness to any intelligent human being, and never will. True, I have met some happy people in London, even now, when England lies wounded from a cruel blow--a blow which I believe may prove the greatest blessing England ever knew. But those happy people are not running after pleasure or concentrating their intelligence upon their own gratification. No, no; those happy people are strenuously, soberly striving to do the whole of their duty as Christians and British citizens. They are happy because of that.

"Oh, my dear friends, do please believe me, that, even apart from God's will and the all-sacrificing love of His Son, _there is absolutely no real happiness in this world outside the clean, sweet way of Duty_. If you profess you love a woman, but shirk your duty by her, of what worth is such love? Is God of less importance to you? Is Eternity of less importance? Are King and Country, and the future of our race and the millions who depend on us for light and guidance and protection, of less importance? As God hears me, _nothing_ is of _any_ importance, beside the one thing vital to salvation, to happiness, to honour, to life, here and hereafter. That one thing is Duty."

The evening congregation was more demonstrative than that of the afternoon, and though I do not think the impression produced by Reynolds's address was deeper or stronger than that made by Stairs--it could hardly have been that--its effects were more noticeable. The great crowd that streamed out of the hall after the Benediction had been pronounced, testified in a hundred ways to the truth of John Crondall's assertion that the Canadian preachers had stirred the very depths of London's heart as no other missioners had ever stirred them.

By George Stairs's invitation, Mrs. Van Homrey, Constance, Crondall, myself, Sir Herbert Tate, and Forbes Thompson, joined the preachers that evening, quite informally, at their very modest supper board. It must have been a little startling to a _bon vivant_ like Sir Herbert to find that the men who had stormed London, supped upon bread and cheese and celery and cold rice pudding, and, without a hint of apology, offered their guests the same Spartan entertainment. But it was quite a brilliant function so far as mental activity and high spirits were concerned. We were discussing the possibilities of the Canadian preachers' pilgrimage, and Crondall said:

"I know that some of you think I take too sanguine a view, but, mark my words, these meetings to-day are the beginning of the greatest religious, moral, and national revival that the British people have ever seen. I am certain of it. Your blushes are quite beside the point, Stairs; they are wholly irrelevant; so is your modesty. Why, my dear fellow, you couldn't help it if you tried. You two men are the mouthpiece of the hour. The hour having come, you could not stay its Message if you tried, nor check the tide of its effect. I know my London. In a matter of this kind--a moral movement--London is the hardest place in the kingdom to move, because its bigness and variety make it so many-sided. Having achieved what you have achieved to-day in London, I say nothing can check your progress. My counsel is for no more than a week in London; two days more in the west, three in the east, and one in the south; and then a bee-line due north through England, with a few days in all big centres."

"Well," said Reynolds, "whatever happens after to-night, I just want to say what George Stairs has more than once said to me, and that is, that to-day's success is three parts due to Mr. Crondall for every one part due to us."

"And to his secretary," said Stairs. "It really is no more than bare truth. Without you, Crondall, there would have been no Albert Hall for us."

"And no Bishop," added Reynolds.

"And no great personages."

"_And_ no columns and columns of newspaper announcements."

"In point of fact, there would have been none of the splendid organization which made to-day possible. I recognize it very clearly. If this is to prove the beginning of a really big movement, then it is a beginning in which _The Citizens_ and their founder have played a very big part. You won't find that we shall forget that; and I know Reynolds is with me when I say that we shall leave no word unsaid, or act undone, which could make our pilgrimage helpful to _The Citizens'_ campaign. I tell you, standing before that vast assembly to-day, it was borne in upon me as I had not felt it before, that your aims and ours are inseparable. We cannot succeed without your succeeding, nor you without our succeeding. Our interpretation of Christianity, our Message, is Duty and simple living, and unless the people will accept that Message they will never achieve what you seek of them. On the other hand, if they will answer your call they will be going a long way toward accepting and acting upon our Message."

"I am mighty thankful that has come home to you, Stairs," said Crondall. "I felt it very strongly when I first asked you to come and talk things over. Your pilgrimage is going to wake up England, morally. It will be our business to see that newly waked England choose the right direction for the first outlay of its energy. The thing will go far--much farther than I have said, and far beyond England's immediate need. But, of course, we mustn't lose sight of that immediate need. If I am not greatly mistaken, one of the first achievements of this movement will be the safe steering of the British public through the General Election. With the New Year I hope to see a real Imperial Parliament sitting. By that I mean a strong Government administering England from the House of Commons, while some of its members sit in an Imperial Chamber--Westminster Hall--and help elected representatives of every one of the Colonies to govern the Empire. My belief is there will be no such thing as an Opposition in the House. Why should England continue to waste its time and energy over pulling both ways in every little job its legislators have to tackle? It sterilizes the efforts of the good men, and gives innumerable openings to the fools and cranks and obstructionists. You will find the very names of the old futile cross-purposes of party warfare will fall into the limbo which has swallowed up the pillory, the stocks, and Little Englandism. With deference to the cloth present in the person of our reverend friends here, let me quote you what to me is one of the most strikingly interesting passages in the Bible: '_The vile person shall be no more called liberal._' It will become clear to all men that the only possible party, the only people who can possibly stand for progress, movement, advance, are those who stand firm for Imperial Federation."

"And then?" said Constance, leaning forward, her face illumined by her shining eyes. Crondall drew a long breath.

"And then--then Britain will have something to say to the Kaiser."

As we rose from the table, George Stairs laid his hand on Reynolds's shoulder.

"Deep waters these, my friend," said he, "for simple parsons from the backwoods. But our part is plain, and close at hand. Our work is to make the writing on the wall flame till all can read and feel: Duty first, last, and all the time. 'The conclusion of the whole matter.'"

"Yes, yes; that's so," said Reynolds, thoughtfully. And then he added, as it were an afterthought: "But was that remark about vile people no more being called liberal really scriptural, I wonder--I wonder!"

"Without a doubt," said Crondall, with a broad grin. "You look up Isaiah XXXII. 5. You will find it there, written maybe three thousand years ago, fitting to-day's situation like a glove."

On the way out to South Kensington, where I accompanied the ladies, I asked Constance what she thought of my old chum, George Stairs.

"Why, Dick," she said, "he makes me feel that an English village can still produce the finest type of man that walks the earth. But, as things have been, in our time, I'm glad this particular man didn't remain in his native village--aren't you?"

"Yes," I agreed, with a half-sad note I could not keep out of my voice. "I suppose Colonial life has taught him a lot."

"Oh, he is magnificent!"

"And look at John Crondall!"

"Ah, John is a wonderful man; Empire-taught, is John."

"And I suppose the man who has never lived the outside life in the big, open places can never----"

And then I think she saw what had brought the twinge of sadness to me; for she touched my arm, her bright eyes gleamed upon me, and--

"You're a terribly impatient man, Dick," she said, with a smile. "It seems to me you've trekked a mighty long way from _The Mass_ office in--how many weeks is it?"

IX

THE CITIZENS

Serene will be our days, and bright And happy will our nature be When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Ev'n now, who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed, Yet find that other strength, according to their need.

_Ode to Duty._

Charles Corbett's _History of the Revival_ is to my mind the most interesting book of this century. There are passages in it which leave me marvelling afresh each time I read them, that any writer, however gifted, could make quite so intimate a revelation, without personal knowledge of the inside workings of the movement he describes so perfectly. But it is a fact that Corbett never spoke with Stairs or Reynolds, or Crondall; neither, I think, was he personally known to any member of the executive of _The Citizens_. Yet I know from my own working experience of the Revival, both in connection with the pilgrimage of the Canadian preachers and the campaign of _The Citizens_, that Corbett's descriptions are marvellously accurate and lifelike, and that the conclusions he draws could not have been made more correct and luminous if they had been written by the leaders of the great joint movement themselves.

The educational authorities were certainly well advised in making Corbett's great work the base from which the contemporary history text-books for use in the national schools were drawn. Your modern students, by the way, would find it hard to realize that, even at the time of the Revival, our school-children were obliged to waste most of the few hours a week which were devoted to historical studies, to the wearisome memorizing of dates and genealogies connected with the Saxon Heptarchy. As a rule they had no time left in which to learn anything whatever of the progress of their own age, or the nineteenth-century development of the Empire. At that time a national schoolboy destined to earn his living as a soldier or a sailor, or a tinker or a tailor, sometimes knew a little of the Saxon kings of England, or even a few dates connected with the Norman Conquest, and the fact that Henry VIII. had six wives. But he had never heard of the Reform Bill, and knew nothing whatever of the incorporation of India, Australia, South Africa, or Canada.

I suppose the most notable and impressive intimation received by the British public of the fact that a great religious, moral, and social revival had begun among them, was contained in Monday morning's newspapers, after the first great Albert Hall services. The recognized chief among imperialistic journals became from the beginning the organ of the new movement. Upon that Monday morning I remember that this journal's first leading article was devoted to the Message of the Canadian preachers, its second to the coming of the various Colonial delegates for the Westminster Hall Conference. For the rest, the centre of the paper was occupied by a four-page supplement, with portraits, describing fully, and reporting verbatim the Albert Hall services. The opening sentences of the leading article gave the public its cue:

"There can be little doubt, we think, that yesterday's services at the Albert Hall mark the inauguration of a national movement in morals, which, before it has gone far, is as likely to earn the name of the Revolution as that of Revival. A religious, moral, and social revolution is what we anticipate as the result of the mission of the Canadian preachers. Never before has London been so stirred to its moral and emotional depths. In such a movement the provincial centres are not likely to prove less susceptible than the metropolis."

As a matter of fact, I had occasion to know that Mr. James Bryanstone, the preachers' secretary (in whose name John Crondall had carried out the whole work of organization, while I served him as secretary and assistant) received during that Monday no fewer than thirty-four separate telegraphic invitations from provincial centres subsequently visited by Stairs and Reynolds. It was, as Crondall had said: The time was ripe, and the Canadian preachers were the mouthpiece of the hour. Their Message filled them, and England was conscious of its need of that Message.

On Monday and Tuesday the afternoon and evening services at the Albert Hall were repeated. Thousands of people were unable to obtain admission upon each occasion. Some of these people were addressed by friends of John Crondall's and _The Citizens_, within the precincts of the hall. On Tuesday morning, sunrise found a great throng of people waiting to secure places when the hall should open. On both days members of the Royal Family were present, and on Tuesday the Primate of England presided over the service addressed by Stairs.

During all this time, John Crondall was working night and day, and I was busy with him in organizing the recruiting campaign of _The Citizens_. The Legion of Frontiersmen, and the members of some scores of rifle clubs, had been enrolled _en bloc_ as members, and applications were pouring in upon us by every post from men who had seen service in different parts of the world, and from men able to equip themselves either as mounted or foot riflemen. On Tuesday evening the Canadian preachers announced that their next day services would be held at the People's Palace, in the East End. But I fancy that, among the packed thousands who attended _The Citizens'_ first public meeting at the Albert Hall on Wednesday afternoon, many came under the impression that they were to hear the Canadian preachers.

The man of all others in England most fitted for the office, presided over that first meeting, in full review uniform, and wearing the sword which had been returned to him by General Baron von Fuechter, after the historic surrender at the Mansion House on Black Saturday. The great little Field Marshal rose at three o'clock and stood for full five minutes, waiting for the tempest of cheering which greeted him to subside, before he could introduce John Crondall to that huge audience. Even when the Field Marshal began to speak he could not obtain complete silence. As one burst of cheering rumbled to its close, another would rise from the hall's far side like approaching thunder, swelling as it came.

It seemed the London public was trying to make up to its erstwhile hero for its long neglect of his brave endeavours to warn them against the evils which had actually befallen. At last, not to waste more time, the little Field Marshal drew his sword, and waved it above his head till a penetrant ray of afternoon sunlight caught and transformed the blade into a streak of living flame.

"There is a stain on it!" he shouted, shaking the blade. "It belongs to you--to England--and there's a stain on it; got on Black Saturday. Now silence, for the man who's for wiping out all stains. Silence!"

It was long since the little man had delivered himself of such a roar, as that last "Silence!" There were one or two Indian veterans in the hall who remembered the note. It had its effect, and John Crondall stood, presently, before an entirely silent and eagerly expectant multitude, when he began his explanation of the ends and aims of _The Citizens_. I remember he began by saying:

"I cannot pretend to be a Canadian preacher--I wish I could." And here there was another demonstration of cheering. One realized that afternoon that the Canadians had lighted a fire in London that would not easily be put out. "No, I am a native of your own London," said Crondall; "but I admit to having learned most of the little I know in Canada, South Africa, India, and Australia. And if there is one thing I have learned very thoroughly in those countries, it is to love England. She has no braver or more devoted sons and lovers within her own shores than our kinsmen oversea. You will find we shall have fresh proofs of that very soon. Meantime, just in passing, I want to tell you this: You have read something in the papers of _The Citizens_, the organization of Britishers who are sworn to the defence of Britain. I am here to tell you about them. Well, in the past fortnight, I have received two hundred and forty cable messages from representative citizens in Canada, South Africa, Australia, India, and other parts of the Empire, claiming membership, and promising support through thick and thin, from thousands of our kinsfolk oversea. So, before I begin, I give you the greeting of men of our blood from all the ends of the earth. They are with us heart and hand, my friends, and eager to prove it. And now I am going to tell you something about _The Citizens_."

But before that last sentence had left Crondall's lips, we were in the thick of another storm of cheering. The religious character of the Canadian preachers' meetings had been sufficient to prevent these outbursts of popular feeling; but now the public seemed to welcome the secular freedom of _The Citizens'_ gathering, as an opportunity for giving their feelings vent. I am not sure that it was John Crondall's message from the Colonies that they cheered. They were moved, I am sure, by a vague general approval of the idea of a combination of citizens for British defence. But their cheering I take to have been produced by feelings they would have been hard put to it to define in any way. They had been deeply stirred by the teaching of the Canadian preachers. In short, they had been seized by the fundamental tenets of the simple faith which has since come to be known to the world as "British Christianity"; and they were eager to find some way in which they could give tangible expression to the faith that was burgeoning within them; stirring them as young mothers are stirred, filling them with resolves and aspirations, none the less real and deep-seated because they were as yet incoherent and shapeless.

I am only quoting the best observers of the time in this description of public feeling when John Crondall made his great recruiting speech for _The Citizens_. The event proved my chief to have been absolutely right in his reckoning, absolutely sound in his judgment. He had urged from the beginning that _The Citizens_ and the Canadian preachers had a common aim. "But you teach a general principle," he had said to George Stairs, "while we supply the particular instance. We must reap where you sow; we must glean after you; we must follow you, as night follows day, as accomplishment follows preparation--because you arouse the sense of duty, you teach the sacredness of duty, while we give it particular direction. It's you who will make them _Citizens_, my dear fellow--for what you mean by a true Christian is what I mean by a true citizen--our part is to swear them in. Or, as you might say, you prepare, and we confirm. Those that won't come up to your standard as Christians, won't be any use to us as _Citizens_."

Just how shrewdly John Crondall had gauged the matter perhaps no one else can realize, even now, so clearly as those who played a recorder's part in the recruiting campaign, as I did from that first day in the Albert Hall, with Constance Grey's assistance, and, later on, with the assistance of many other people. At a further stage, and in other places, we made arrangements for enrolling members after every meeting. Upon this occasion we were unable to face the task, and, instead, a card was given to every applicant, for subsequent presentation at _The Citizens'_ headquarters in Victoria Street, where I spent many busy hours, with a rapidly growing clerical staff, swearing in new members, and booking the full details of each man's position and capabilities, for registration on the roster.

We had no fees of any kind, but every new member was invited to contribute according to his means to _The Citizens'_ equipment fund. During the twenty-four hours following that first meeting at the Albert Hall, over twenty-seven thousand pounds was received in this way from new members. But we enrolled many who contributed nothing; and we enrolled a few men to whom we actually made small payments from a special fund raised privately for that purpose. All this last-named minority, and a certain proportion of other members, went directly into camp training on the estates of various wealthy members, who themselves were providing camp equipment and instructors, while, in many cases, arranging also for employment which should make these camps as nearly as might be self-supporting.

Among the list of people who agreed to deliver addresses at our meetings we now included many of the most eloquent speakers, and some of the most famous names in England. But I am not sure that any of them ever evoked the same storms of enthusiasm, the same instant and direct response that John Crondall earned by his simple speeches. Heart and soul, John Crondall was absorbed in the perfection and furtherance of the organization he had founded, and when he sought public support he was irresistible.

In those first days of the campaign there were times when John Crondall was so furiously occupied, that his bed hardly knew the touch of him, and I could not exchange a word with him outside the immediate work of our hands. This was doubtless one reason why I took a certain idea of mine to Constance Grey, instead of to my chief. Together, she and I interviewed Brigadier-General Hapgood, of the Salvation Army, and, on the next day, the venerable chief of that remarkable organization, General Booth. The proposition we put before General Booth was that he should join hands with us in dealing with that section of our would-be members who described themselves as unemployed and without resources.

For five minutes the old General stroked his beard, and offered occasional ejaculatory interrogations. I pointed out that the converts of the Canadian preachers (for whom the General expressed unbounded admiration and respect) flocked to our standard, full of genuine eagerness to carry out the gospel of duty and simple living. Suddenly, in the middle of one of my sentences, this commander-in-chief of an army larger than that of any monarch in Christendom made up his mind, and stopped me with a gesture.

"We will do it," he said. "Yes, yes, I see what you would say. Yes, yes, to be sure, to be sure; that is quite so. We will do it. Come and see me again, and I will put a working plan before you. Good day--God bless you!"

And we were being shown out. It was all over in a few minutes; but that was the beginning of the connection between the Salvation Army and that section of _The Citizens_ whose members lacked both means and employment. According to a safe and conservative estimate, we are told that the total number of sworn _Citizens_ subsequently handled by the Salvation Army was six hundred and seventy-five thousand. We supplied the instructors, officers, and all equipment; the Salvation Army carried out all the other work of control, organization, and maintenance, and made their great farm camps so nearly self-supporting as to be practically no burden upon _The Citizens'_ funds. The effect upon the men themselves was wholly admirable. Every one of them was a genuinely unemployed worker, and the way they all took their training was marvellous.

I think Constance Grey was as pleased as I was with the praise we won from John Crondall over this. A little while before this time I should have felt jealous pangs when I saw her sweet face lighten and glow at a word of commendation from John Crondall. But my secretaryship was teaching me many things. No other woman could ever mean to me one tithe of all that Constance Grey meant. Of that I was very sure. To think of such women as handsome Beatrice Blaine or Sylvia Wheeler, in a vein of comparison, was for me like comparing the light of a candle in a distant window with the moon herself. The mere sound of Constance's voice thrilled me as nothing else could. But I am glad to remember now that I no longer knew so small an emotion as jealousy where she was concerned.

John Crondall was the strongest man of all the men I knew; Constance was the sweetest woman. Here was a natural and fitting comradeship. I thought of my chief as the mate of the woman I loved. My heart ached at times. But I am glad and proud that I had no jealousy.

X

SMALL FIGURES ON A GREAT STAGE

I, loving freedom and untried, No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust; And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred The task, in smoother walks to stray, But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

_Ode to Duty._

It has often been said of the Canadian preachers that they conferred the gift of eloquence upon all their converts. It is certainly a fact that long before Stairs and Reynolds had traversed half the length of England, disciples of theirs were winning converts to "British Christianity"--as the religion of Duty and simple living came to be called--in every county in the kingdom.

In the same way, the progress of _The Citizens'_ recruiting campaign was made marvellously rapid and triumphant in character by reason of the enthusiastic activity of all new adherents. During the second of John Crondall's great meetings in Birmingham, for example, we received telegraphic greeting from the chairmen presiding over one hundred and ninety-eight other meetings then being held for the furtherance of our cause in different parts of the country. And, in many cases, those who addressed these meetings were among the most famous public speakers in England.

In most towns we spent no more than twenty-four hours, in others no more than twelve hours, and in some we stayed only a third of that time. In one memorable day we addressed immense gatherings in four different towns, and travelled one hundred and thirty miles to boot. But in each one of those towns, as in every centre visited, we left a properly organized committee at work, with arrangements for frequent meetings, and the swearing in of new members.

The Canadian preachers spent only one day in many of the places they visited. But in large centres they stayed longer, because, after the first week of the pilgrimage, the attendances at their meetings became unmanageably large, owing to the arrangements made by railway companies, who ran special trains to tap the outlying parts of every district visited. Advance agents--a hard-working band, many of whom were well-to-do volunteers--prepared the way in every detail for the progress of both the Canadians and ourselves, and local residents placed every possible facility at our disposal.

Never in the history of religious revivals in England has anything been known to equal the whole-souled enthusiasm with which the new evangel of Duty was welcomed as the basis of our twentieth-century national life. The facts that the Canadian preachers were rarely seen apart, and that the teaching of each was identical with that of the other, combined with the general knowledge that one represented the Church of England and the other a great Nonconformist body; these things divested the pilgrimage of any suggestion of denominationalism, and lent it the same urgent strength of appeal for members of all sects, and members of none. This seems natural enough to us now, ours being a Christian country. But it was regarded then as a wonderful testimony to the virtue of the new teaching, because at that time sectarian differences, animosities even, were very clearly marked, and led far more naturally to opposition and hostility between the representatives of different denominations than to anything approaching united effort in a common cause.

It was during the day we spent in York that chance led to my witnessing an incident which greatly affected me. My relations with my chief, John Crondall, were not such as to call for the observance of much ceremony between us. Accordingly, it was with no thought of interference with his privacy that I blundered into my chief's sitting-room to announce the number of new members we had enrolled after the meeting. John Crondall was standing on the hearth-rug, his right hand was resting on Constance Grey's shoulder, his lips were touching her forehead.

For an instant I thought of retreat. But the thing seemed too clumsy. Accordingly, having turned to close the door, with deliberation, I advanced into the room with some awkward remark about having thought my chief was alone, and produced my figures of the enrolment of new members. After a few moments Constance left us, referring to some errand she had in view. I did not look at her, and John Crondall plunged at once into working talk. As for me, I was acutely conscious that I had seen Crondall kiss Constance; but my chief made no sign to show me whether or not he was aware that I had seen this.

Although I thought I had accustomed myself to the idea of these two being predestined mates, I realized now that no amount of reasoning would ever really reconcile me to the practical outworking of the idea. Of course, my feeling about it would be described as jealousy pure and simple. Perhaps it was; but I cherish the idea that it was some more kindly shade of feeling. I know it brought no hint of resentment or weakening in my affection for John Crondall; and most assuredly I harboured no unkind thought of Constance. But I loved her; every pulse in me throbbed love and longing at her approach. Again and again I had demonstrated to myself my own unworthiness of such a woman; the natural affinity between Constance and Crondall. Yet now, the sight of that kiss was as the sound of a knell in my heart; it filled me with an aching lament for the death of----of something which had still lived in me, whether admitted or not, till then.

For days after that episode of the kiss I lived in hourly expectation of a communication from John Crondall. Our relations were so intimate that I felt certain he would not withhold his confidence for long. But day succeeded day in our strenuous, hurried life, and no word came to me from my chief regarding any other thing than our own work. Indeed, I thought I detected a certain new sternness in John Crondall's demeanour, an extra rigid concentration upon work, which carried with it, for me, a suggestion of his being unwilling to meet one upon any other than the working footing. I was surprised and a little hurt about this, because of late there had been no reservations in the confidence with which my chief treated me. Also, I could not see any possible reason for secrecy in such a matter; it might as well be told first as last, I thought. And I watched Constance with a brooding eye for signs she never made, for a confidence which did not come from either of my friends.

The thing possessed my mind, and must, I fear, have interfered materially with my work. But after a time the idea came to me that these two had decided to allow our joint work to take precedence of their private happiness, and to put aside their own affairs until the aims of _The Citizens_ had been attained. I recalled certain little indications I myself had received from Constance before John Crondall's return from South Africa, to the effect that personal feeling could have no great weight with her, while our national fate hung in the balance. And, by dulling the edge of my expectancy, this conclusion somehow eased the ache which had possessed me since the day of the kiss to which chance had made me a witness. But it did not altogether explain to me the new reserve, the hint of stiffness in John Crondall's manner; and, rightly or wrongly, I knew when I took Constance's hand in mine, or met the gaze of her shining eyes, that I did so as a devout lover, and not merely as a friend.

XI

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

Through no disturbance of my soul Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy controul; But in the quietness of thought: Me this unchartered freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires: My hopes no more must change their name; I long for a repose that ever is the same.

_Ode to Duty._

From the first, the courtesy of the Press was securely enlisted in _The Citizens'_ favour by John Crondall. For many months the _Standard_, now firmly established as the principal organ of the reform movement, devoted an entire page each day to the progress of our campaign and the pilgrimage of our forerunners--the Canadian preachers. John Crondall had gone thoroughly into the matter at the beginning with the editor of this journal, and the key-note thus given was taken by the Press of the whole country.

The essence of our treatment by the newspapers lay in their careful avoidance of all matter which would be likely to earn for the movement the hostility of Germany, or of the officers in command of the German forces in England. Our language took on a new and special meaning in the columns of the newspapers, where reports of our campaign were concerned. Such adjectives as "social," "moral," and the like were made to cover quite special meanings, as applied to the organization of _The Citizens_. So ably was all this done, that the German authorities regarded the whole movement as social and domestic, with a direct bearing upon the General Election, perhaps, but none whatever upon international politics or Anglo-German relations.

In Elberfeld's ponderous history we are given the text of a despatch to the Kaiser in which General Baron von Fuechter assured his Imperial master that any interference with _The Citizens_ and their meetings would be gratuitous and impolitic:

"Their aims being purely social and domestic, and those of a quasi-religious Friendly Society, resembling something between their 'Band of Hope' and their 'Antediluvian Buffaloes.' The English have a passion for this kind of child's play, and are absurdly impatient of official surveillance. Their incorrigible sentimentality is soothed by such movements as those of the Canadian preachers and _The Citizens_; but even the rudiments of discipline or efficient cooerdination are lacking among them. Combination against us would be impossible for them, for this is a country of individualists, among whom the matter of obligations to the State is absolutely not recognized. There is no trace of military feeling among the people, and in my opinion the invasion might safely have been attempted five, if not ten years, before it was. The absence of any note of resentment in their newspapers against our occupation has been quite marked since their preoccupation with the Canadian preachers and _The Citizens_. The people accept it in the most matter-of-course manner, and are already entirely absorbed once more in their own affairs, and even in their sports. British courage and independence have been no more than a myth for many years past--a bubble which your Majesty's triumphantly successful policy has burst for ever."

Another important feature, alike of our campaign and the pilgrimage of the preachers, was their positively non-party and non-sectarian character. John Crondall had been firm upon this point from the beginning. I remember his saying at the first meeting of the executive of _The Citizens_:

"Our party government, party conflict, here in England, have sapped the vitality of the British Empire long enough. I believe the invasion has scotched the thing, and we must be very careful to do nothing that might help to bring it to life again. A Radical, as such, is neither better nor worse than a Conservative. It does not matter two pins what becomes of the Conservative organization, or the Liberal party, as parties. I should be delighted never to hear of either again. Our business is the Empire's business; and we want the people of the Empire with us--the whole lot of them--as one solid party."

Accordingly, no mention of any political party was ever heard at our meetings. We made no appeal to any given section of the community, but only to the British public as a whole. We aimed at showing that there could be no division in national affairs, save the division which separates citizens and patriots from men worthy of neither name. And that is why Maurice Hall, in his famous _British Renaissance_, was able to write that:

"The General Elections of the invasion year were practically directed and decided by two forces: the influence of _The Citizens_ and the influence of the Canadian preachers' Duty teaching. Political opinions and traditions, as previously understood, played no part whatever."

Of course, it seems natural enough now that the British public should be united in matters of national and imperial import; but those whose memories are long enough will bear me out in saying that in previous elections nine voters in ten had been guided, not by any question of the needs of the country or the Empire, but by their support of this party or of that, of this colour or of that. Our politicians had strenuously supported the preposterous faction system, and fanned party rivalry in every way, because they recognized that it gave them personal power and aggrandizement, which they had long placed before any consideration of the common weal. By this they had brought shame and disaster upon the nation, in precisely the same manner that the same results had been produced by the same means, when these were used by the oligarchs of the Dutch Republic, prior to the downfall of the Netherlands.

Indeed, for some time before the invasion our politicians might have been supposed to be modelling their lives and policy entirely upon those of the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century; particularly with regard to their mercenary spoliation of the nation's defence forces, and their insane pertinacity in clinging to the policy of "cheapness," which killed both the manufacturing and the agricultural industries of the country, by allowing other properly protected nations to oust our producers from all foreign markets, and to swamp our home markets with their surplus stocks. Down to the minutest detail, the same causes and actions had produced the same results a century earlier in the Netherlands; and even as, first, King William of Prussia, and then revolutionary France, had devastated the Netherlands, so had the Kaiser's legions overrun England. It was not for lack of warning that our politicians had blindly followed so fatal a lead. "The Destroyers" were still being warned most urgently at the very time of the invasion by public speakers, and in such lucid works as Ellis Barker's _The Rise and Decline of the Netherlands_.

In spite of the emphatically non-party character of _The Citizens'_ campaign, John Crondall kept in close touch throughout with all his political friends, and very many members of Parliament were among our leading workers. My chief's idea was that, when the elections drew near, we should cease to map out our movements in accordance with those of the Canadian preachers, and allow them to be guided by the exigencies of the electoral campaign; bringing all our influence to bear wherever we saw weakness in the cause of patriotism and reform.

Already we had arrangements made for leading members of _The Citizens_ to address meetings throughout the elections at a good many centres. But, before the electioneering had gone far, it became evident that more had already been accomplished than we supposed. Candidates who came before their constituents with any kind of party programme were either angrily howled down or contemptuously ignored. Old supporters of "The Destroyers," who ventured upon temporizing tactics, were peremptorily faced with demands for straight-out declarations of policy upon the single issue of patriotic reform and duty to the State. With a single exception, the actual members of the Cabinet in "The Destroyers'" Administration refrained from any attempt to secure reelection.

Such an electoral campaign had never before been known in England. Candidates who, even inadvertently, used such words as "Conservative," "Radical," or "Liberal," were hissed into silence. Even the word "Labour" was taboo, so far as it referred to any political party. "Duty," "Patriotism," "Defence," "Citizenship," "United Empire," "British Federation," and, again, ringing loudly above all other cries, "Duty"--those were the watchwords and the platforms of the invasion year elections. The candidate who promised relief from taxation was laughed at. The candidate who promised legislation directed toward the citizen's defence of the citizen's hearth and home, was cheered to the echo.

The one member of "The Destroyers'" Administration who sought reelection, found it well to assert the claims of his youth by making a public recantation of all his previously expressed views and policy, and seeking to outdo every one else in the direction of patriotic reform. Though he gulled nobody, he was listened to good-humouredly, and defeated with great ease by Abel Winchester, the Australian, who saw years of work before him, in conjunction with Forbes Thompson, in the supervision of village rifle corps throughout the country.

In many ways the country had never known a Parliamentary election so constructive; in one respect it was absolutely destructive. It destroyed all previously existing political parties. No single member was returned as the representative of a previously existing party. The voters of Britain had refused to consider any other than the one issue of patriotic reform: the all-British policy, as it was called; and the consequence was, that when Parliament assembled it was found that the House of Commons could no longer boast possession of an Opposition.

The members of that assembly had been sent to St. Stephens to busy themselves, in unison, with the accomplishment of a common end; and if one among them should waste the time of the House by any form of obstruction, he could only do so by breaking the pledges upon the strength of which he had been elected. This fact was clearly set forth in the Speech from the Throne, delivered by the King in person. The business of Parliament was in full swing before its second sitting was far advanced. Though then an aged man, the famous statesman to whom the King had entrusted the task of forming a new Cabinet bore himself with the vigour of early manhood, and no Prime Minister had ever faced Parliament with so great a driving power behind him of unity, confidence, and national sympathy. The fact that for years his name had been most prominently associated with every movement making for unity within the Empire; that he had striven valiantly for many years against the anti-British forces of disintegration; this was admitted to augur well for the success of the Conference of Colonial representatives then holding its first sitting in historic Westminster Hall.

Meantime, the patriotic enthusiasm of the general public seemed to have been greatly heightened by the result of the general elections. By common consent a note of caution, of warning, took the place of the stirring note of appeal and stimulation which had formerly characterized every public address delivered under the auspices of _The Citizens_. Almost without invitation now the cream of the country's manhood flocked into our travelling headquarters for enrolment on the roster of _The Citizens_; and: "Hasten slowly--and silently," became John Crondall's counsel to all our supporters.

The effect upon the whole public of this counsel of caution and restraint was one of the most remarkable features of that period; and it showed, more clearly, I think, than anything else, the amazing depth and strength of the influence exerted by the Canadian preacher's Duty teaching. Our relations with the Power to which we were in effect a people in vassalage, and payers of tribute, demanded at this stage the exercise of the most cautious restraint; and finely the people responded to this demand. In his _History of the Revival_, Charles Corbett says, with good reason:

"It was the time of waiting, of cautious preparation, of enthusiasm restrained and harnessed to prudence, which must really be regarded as the probationary era of the Revival. It is in no sense a depreciation of the incalculable value of the work done by the Canadian apostles of the new faith, to say that their splendid efforts might well have proved of no more than transitory effect, but for that stern, silent period of repression, of rigid, self-administered discipline, which followed the access to office of the first Free Government.[1] That period may be regarded as the crucible in which British Christianity was tested and proven; in which the steel of the new patriotism was tempered and hardened to invincible durability. The Canadian preachers awakened the people; _The Citizens_ set them their task; the period of waiting schooled them in the spirit of the twentieth century, the key-note of which is discipline, the meaning of which is Duty."

[1] This title, applied by the Prince of Wales in a speech delivered at the Guildhall to the first Parliament which met without an Opposition, remained in use for a number of years afterwards.

I do not regard that as a statement of more than the truth; and I do not think it would be easy to overrate, either the value of the period or the excellence of the response to the demand it made upon them. The only dissatisfied folk were the publicans and the theatre and music-hall lessees. The special journals which represented the interests of this class--caterers for public amusement and public dissipation--were full of covert raillery against what they called the new Puritanism. Their raillery was no more than covert, however; the spirit of the time was too strong to permit more than that, and I do not think it produced any effect worth mentioning.

Here again our difficulties proved real blessings in disguise. The burden of invasion taxation was heavy; all classes felt the monetary pinch of it, apart altogether from the humiliation of the German occupation; and this helped very materially in the development of common sense ideals regarding economy and simple living. Not for nothing had John Crondall called the Canadian preachers the mouthpiece of the hour. One saw very plainly, in every walk of life, a steadily growing love of sobriety. The thing was perhaps most immediately noticeable in the matter of the liquor traffic. Throughout the country, those public-houses and hotels which were in reality only drinking-shops were being closed up by the score, or converted into other sorts of business premises, for lack of custom in their old misery-breeding trade. The consumption of spirits, and of all the more expensive wines, decreased enormously. It is true there was a slight increase in the consumption of cider, and the falling off of beer sales was slight. But this was because a large number of people, who had been in the habit of taking far less wholesome and more costly beverages, now made use of both beer and cider. It was not at all evidence that the consumption of alcohol among the poorer classes maintained its old level. The sales of gin, for example, fell to less than half the amounts used in the years before the invasion.

And this was no more than one aspect of the great national progress toward realization of the ideals of Duty and simple living. Extravagance of every sort became, not merely unpopular, but hated and despised, as evidence of unpatriotic feeling. In this, I think, the women of England deserve the greater meed of gratitude and respect. The change they wrought in domestic economy was not less than wonderful when one realizes how speedily it was brought about, and how great was the change. For in the years immediately preceding the invasion the women had been sad offenders in this respect, particularly, perhaps, in their vulgar and ostentatious extravagance in matters of dress. Now, the placards of the British Commercial Union, exhorting the public to "Buy British Empire Goods only," became out of date almost as soon as they were printed, their advice being no longer needed.

No more could one see the wives and daughters of England competing with their unfortunate sisters of the _demi-monde_ in the extravagance of their attire. One of the first evidences of the effect of the Canadian preachers' teaching that I can remember was the notable access of decorum and simplicity in dress which dominated the fashion of our clothes. In this, as in sundry other matters, I think we were helped by the unprecedented number of Colonials who began to flock into England at this time from Canada, South Africa, and Australia. But, despite the general desire for economy, it is certain that from that time on the middle-class folk at all events began to wear better clothes and buy better commodities generally--articles which lasted longer, and were better worth using. The reason of this was all a part of the same teaching, the same general tendency. Shoddy goods, representing the surplus output of German and American firms, could no longer be sold in England, however low the prices at which they were offered; and shopkeepers soon found that they lost standing when they offered such goods to the public. Thus true economy and true patriotism were served at one and the same time.

Extravagance in eating, dress, entertainment, and the like, became that year more disgraceful than drunkenness had been a year before in the public eye. In the same way we attained to clearer vision and a saner sense of proportion in very many matters of first-rate social importance. I remember reading that the market for sixty and seventy horse-power touring motor-cars had almost ceased to exist, while the demand for industrial motor-vehicles, and for cars of something under twenty horse-power, had never been so flourishing.

Before this time we had fallen into incredible extravagance in our attitude toward all the parasitical occupations, and paid absurd tributes of respect to many of those who waxed fat upon pandering to our weaknesses. This passed away now, like a single night's dream, and incidentally gave rise to a certain amount of complaining from those who suffered by it. But the public was no more inclined to heed these complainings than it was to fritter away its time and substance in drinking-bars or in places of amusement. The famous "Middle-class Music-halls" faded quickly into the limbo of forgotten failures, and the most popular of public performers were those--and they were not a few--who forsook grease-paint for khaki, and posturing on stages for exercising on rifle-ranges and drill-grounds.

The word "Puritanism" was still a term of reproach then, by virtue of its old associations; but, as we see things nowadays, there is room only for gladness in admitting that the wave of feeling which swept through the homes of England in the wake of the Canadian preachers, _The Citizens_, and the organizers of the village rifle corps, was in very truth a mighty revival of Puritanism, backed by the newly awakened twentieth-century spirit of Imperial patriotism, with its recognition of the duty of loyalty, not alone to country, but to race and Empire. Yes, it was true Puritanism--stern, unfaltering Puritanism; and it came to England not a day too soon. Without it, we could never have been purged of our insensate selfishness; without it, the loose agglomeration of states, then called the British Empire, could never have been welded into the State; without it, the great events of that year would have been impossible, and the dominion of the English-speaking peoples must, ere this, have become no more than a matter of historical interest.

XII

BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER

Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

_Ode to Duty._

I suffered no change so far as Constance Grey's demeanour to me was concerned; but certainly John Crondall had altered since the day upon which I had so inopportunely entered his room when Constance was with him. At times I fancied his change was toward me personally, and I thought it curiously unlike the man to cherish any sort of unkindness over an accident. But then, again, at odd times, I watched him with other men among our now considerable train, and the conclusion was borne in upon me that the change had nothing to do with me, but was general in its character. He was more stern, less cheery, and far more reserved than before.

And this I thought most strange, for it seemed to me that, even though Constance and my chief might have agreed that nothing like an engagement between them must come till our work was done, yet the understanding which could lead to the kiss I had seen was surely warrant enough for a change of quite another character than this one. I thought of it whenever I took Constance's hand in greeting her; and I think my eyes must sometimes have told her what my heart always felt: that in me, this right to do as Crondall had done would have seemed an entry into Paradise, let circumstances and conditions be what they might. And with such a thought I would recall what, to me, would never be the least of Black Saturday's events: that once Constance Grey had lain in my arms--unconsciously, it was true; and that upon the same occasion I had kissed her, and known in that moment that never again could she be as other women for me.

I was often tempted to speak to Constance of the change I saw in John Crondall, and one day in Carlisle I yielded to the temptation. At one and the same time I both craved and dreaded definite news of the understanding between the woman I loved and the man I liked and respected more than any other. I wanted Constance's confidence; yet I felt as though my life would be stripped bare by definite knowledge that she was betrothed. So, moth-like, I hovered about the perilous subject, with a nervous endeavour to lend natural composure to my voice.

"Do you notice any particular change in John Crondall of late?" I asked. And it seemed to me that Constance flushed slightly as she answered me:

"Change? No. Has he changed?"

"Well, he does not seem to be nearly so happy as----" And there I broke away from a dangerous comparison, and substituted--"as he was awhile back."

"Really? But what makes you think that?"

"I fancy he is much more reserved--less frank and more preoccupied; not so jolly, in fact, as he always was. I have thought so for several weeks."

"I am sorry, very sorry; and I do hope you are mistaken. Of course he is overworked--we all are; but that never hurt him before; and with things going so splendidly---- Oh, I hope you are mistaken."

"Perhaps so," I said. "Certainly I think he has every reason to be happy--to be happy and proud; every reason."

And I stopped at that; but Constance made no sign to me; and I wondered she did not, for we were very intimate, and she was sweetly kind to me in those days. Indeed, once when I looked up sharply at her with a question from some work we were engaged upon, I saw a light in her beautiful eyes which thrilled my very heart with strange delight. Her expression had changed instantly, and I told myself I had no sort of business to be thrilled by a look which was obviously born of reverie, of thoughts about John Crondall. Such a sweet light of love her eyes held! I told myself for the hundredth time that no consideration should ever cloud the happiness of the man who was so fortunate as to inspire it--to have won the heart which looked out through those shining eyes.

But it must not be supposed that I had much leisure for this sort of meditation. My feeling for Constance certainly dominated me. Indeed, it accounted for everything of import in my life--for my general attitude of mind and, I make no doubt, for my being where I was and playing the