THE TERROR
BY
A. E. THOMAS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY HERMAN C. WALL
It was a gray and bitter morning in January when Tim first saw The Vale. For weeks winter had lain heavy upon the sunny South. A cold rain had swept the countryside; then came zero weather for days, till the ice lay inch-thick on all the broad pikes of Lexington County, and only the firs were green.
Tim and his mother had left the little cabin they called home at the first crack of dawn and together had tramped the five miles that spelled the road to The Vale. All the way they spoke scarce a word, for they knew that parting was near and that it had to be. Colonel Darnton was to take the boy and make a jockey of him, if he could, and the stables of The Vale were to be his home thereafter.
The negroes were feeding the stallions when the boy and his mother trudged up to the big barn. They sat on a feed-box until the Colonel had finished his breakfast and come out from the big house under the trees.
"Morning to you, Mrs. Doolin," said the Colonel. "And so you've brought the boy, eh?"
"I have that," responded Mrs. Doolin, in her odd mixture of brogue and Southern drawl. "An' I beg ye t' be good tew him. Since Pete died, he's all I hov, an' it's the good lad he's been to me, an' phwat it is I'll be doin' widout him whin he's gawn, I dinnaw. Will ye be afther lettin' him come down t' see me wanst a fortnight, sor?"
"Of course I will," smiled the Colonel, and then he turned to Tim, standing there, so pale and little.
"And you, boy," he said, taking the lad's chin in his big hand and turning the blue eyes up to his gaze, "how about you—strong for the hosses, eh?"
Tim's lip quivered. He was only twelve. But he looked the Colonel bravely in the face.
"I reck'n," he said.
"Well, well, we'll see," said the Colonel, mercifully releasing the boy's chin. "'Twould be odd if you weren't. Your father was mighty handy with 'em all—mighty handy."
"Savin' yer prisince, Colonel, I'd hov jist wan wurrud wid th' boy," said the woman, and she drew Tim aside.
"Lookee yew here, yew Tim Doolin," she said, when she had him by himself, "don't yew niver fergit thet yew're up here tew The Vale tew larn hosses. Raymimber thet." The boy drew one ragged sleeve across his blue eyes.
"All right, maw," he quavered.
"An' raymimber this, too," she went on. "There niver yit was wan Doolin thet wasn't on the square. Hoss racin' ain't prayin', an' all them as races hosses ain't like the Colonel. But there niver was wan Doolin yit thet wasn't on the level. Mind yew ain't the fust crook in the clan, er else yew needn't niver come home t' the Blue Grass ter look yewr maw in the face."
Thin and gaunt and gray-haired, she stood in the biting wind that fought to tear her shawl from her bony shoulders. For a moment she stared, stern and dry-eyed, at the boy. Somehow he had never seemed so tiny before.
"Will yew raymimber thet?" she demanded at last. Tim dropped his eyes in boyish embarrassment.
"I reck'n," he said.
His mother drew her shawl tightly about her shoulders and departed without more ado.
The life of a stable-boy on a great breeding-farm is not all beer and skittles, whatever that may be. His principal business is to look sharp and do as he is told and never forget. It's always early to rise, before dawn in the winter time, and often late to bed, if some of the priceless thoroughbreds are ailing. Moreover, the tongues of stable foremen are sharp, and their hands are heavy.
Tim made his mistakes. Once, after they came to trust him at The Vale, on a sharp morning when he was giving King Faraway, the head of the stud, his morning gallop on the pike, he fell to dreaming. A little brook ran under a wooden bridge built for carriage use. But to one side there was a ford through which people drove in summer to give their horses drink. The brook was solid ice that morning, but Tim, not thinking, turned King Faraway into the ford. The great horse slipped and fell.
Tim sprang up from the far side of the brook with the blood gushing from a nasty cut on his forehead. But he didn't think of that. Was King Faraway hurt?
He walked the three miles back to The Vale, the stallion limping behind him, and at the stable he told the truth and got a thrashing.
King Faraway was on three legs for a month. But he recovered. Every night of that month the boy slept on a heap of straw in the stallion's box stall, waking up half a dozen times a night to rub the injured stifle; and in the end the great horse was as good as new.
Again, one chilly November night Tim left one of his yearlings out in the South Paddock. Late that night a cold, driving storm came up. In the morning they found the yearling shivering by the paddock gate. The Colonel himself worked his fingers off over that yearling colt, for he was bred in the purple. The youngster had pneumonia, but they saved him, and the Colonel said that Tim's nursing was what pulled him through.
On an April morning something over two years after the day Tim came to The Vale, he started with the season's two-year-olds for the big tracks at New York. He had helped break the youngsters to the saddle and to the track on the half-mile race-course on the farm, and he knew every one of the lot as if he had been its mother. So when they rounded them up to take them to the special box-cars that were waiting in the freight yards, the Colonel took the lad aside.
"Really want to be a jockey, Tim?" he asked.
"Sure," said Tim.
"Want to leave us, then, eh?" The boy looked away, and the Colonel spared him.
"All right," he said with a laugh. "To the races you go. You can come back if you don't like it."
All the broad acres of The Vale and the costly stallions and the brood mares belonged to David Holland, a captain of finance. He was too busy manipulating the ticker to pay much attention to the stock-farm itself. He knew nothing whatever about the breeding of horses and was clever enough to admit it. He paid the bills and got his fun out of "seeing 'em run."
The Holland stable was already quartered at Sheepshead Bay when the Colonel and Tim arrived with the two-year-olds. Pat Faulkner, the trainer, was there to meet them. He and the Colonel drew aside and left the boy to himself. The hours for morning gallops were long since over, and when Tim climbed the white rail fence that enclosed the back-stretch, the big and beautiful track was absolutely deserted.
"Well," said Faulkner, "what sort of a grist have you brought me this trip? I've been bitin' me nails off to find out, but not a word would you write."
They had out the chestnut colt with the one white foot, and the black with the white blaze, and the bay filly by Checkers-Flighty, and a few other individuals, while the trainer felt them over and looked them up and down and round about, and had them walked and trotted and cantered through the stable yard.
When it was all over, and he knew that here was material that would make his rivals sit up, Faulkner's eyes fell upon a slim shape sitting on the white rail fence.
"What's the kid?" he demanded.
"That?" said the Colonel, with a smile, "why, that's Tim Doolin, a champion jockey I've brought you." The trainer grunted.
"How old?" he asked.
"Going on fifteen, weighs seventy-three pounds, is kind and clever, knows the hosses, and they'll do for him. Try him out at exercise work, and if he makes good, give him a chance to ride."
That same night the Colonel departed.
After that Tim's work was cut out for him. There were twenty-six two-year-olds in the Holland stables, twelve three-year-olds, and six or eight thoroughbreds in the aged division. Faulkner kept a big staff of grooms and exercise boys, but there was always a day's work for each of them. Aside from the routine exercise for every horse in training, the feeding, the grooming, and so on, all the youngsters had to be broken to the starting barrier. Some trainers didn't pay much attention to that.
"Let 'em come to it in their races," said they. Not so, Faulkner. He drilled every last one of his two-year-olds till the starting gate was no more to them than so much steel and wood and webbing.
Tim was not long in winning the trainer's confidence. The job of breaking to the barrier was turned over to the stable foreman, under whose eyes the grooms and exercise boys worked. But one afternoon Faulkner himself came out to see how things were going. He noticed that the three two-year-olds that were Tim's especial care were already barrier-broken. He cross-examined the lad. Tim was reticent.
"I—I—jest get 'em used to it," he faltered.
"How?" demanded the trainer.
"I—I jest lead 'em up to it, first along, an' let 'em smell of it and look at it. Then I git one of the boys to spring it while I'm a-standin' by at their heads. They git used to it pretty soon. Then I ride 'em up to it."
"Humph!" grunted the trainer; but later he said to the foreman: "That kid's got sense."
It wasn't long before Tim was exercising three-year-olds, and one gray morning when he turned out of the loft where he slept, the foreman shouted:
"Hurry up, you Tim, an' git yer breakfast."
The boy wondered and obeyed. He gulped down the last of his oatmeal, shot out of the training kitchen, and ran up to the stables, where a negro groom was holding a big bay horse, about which Faulkner himself was busily working. The trainer arose as the boy ran up.
"Up you go, kid," he said and tossed Tim into the saddle.
And Tim knew that he was to exercise Lear! And everybody knew that the Holland stable was pointing Lear for the Brooklyn Handicap! It was a proud moment for Tim. But his honors didn't sit too heavily on his small shoulders, for Faulkner was a hard task-master.
"Jog him to the mile post and send him the last half in .55 an' keep yer eye on the flag," the trainer would order.
Then the boy would canter away through the gray light, and the trainer, handkerchief in one hand and stop-watch in the other, would mount the fence. If the clock said .57 for that last half mile, or anything between that and .55, there was a slap on the back and a "Good kid," for Tim, but woe to him if the clicking hand cut it down to .53.
Mistakes he made, and many of them, but they grew fewer and fewer. Good hands he had (for they are born with a boy, if he's ever to have them) and an intuitive knowledge of the temper of a horse. A good seat they had taught him at The Vale. And gradually, little by little and bit by bit, he came to be what only one jockey in fifty ever grows into—an unerring judge of pace.
Just what it is that tells a boy whether the muscles of steel that he bestrides are shooting him rhythmically over a furlong of dull brown earth or black and slimy mud in .12½ or .13¼, some person may perhaps be able to tell, but certain it is that no person ever has told it. Long after Tim had learned the secret as few boys have ever known it, I asked him.
"Why," said he, "yew know your hoss, an' after thet, why, yew jest feel it."
It was not until the autumn meeting at Gravesend that Tim first wore the colors. It was in an overnight selling race for two-year-olds, for which Faulkner had in despair named Gracious.
Gracious was a merry little short-bodied filly, who was bred as well as any of the Holland lot, but who hadn't done well. Out of six starts she had never shown anything, and Faulkner had determined to start her once more and then weed her out. The weight, eighty-seven pounds, was so light that the stable jockey couldn't make it. Then Faulkner remembered the Colonel's words: "Give him a chance, if he makes good."
"I'll do it," he said, and told Tim.
Tim didn't sleep well that night, and with wide eyes he welcomed the first light of the great day. At last he was to wear the colors!
"Just get her off well and take your time," said Faulkner, as he put the boy up. "Rate her along to the stretch and then drive her."
Tim did all that. Coming into the stretch, there were four horses ahead of him on the rail. But two of them were weakening. Then Tim called on the filly. She answered and went up. But the colt next her was staggering. He swerved, and Tim had to pull out. He got Gracious going again and landed her third, only a head behind the second horse. Faulkner was radiant as Tim dismounted.
"Good kid," he said. He had backed the filly a bit to run third. But Tim was almost weeping.
"I could have won," he moaned, "if thet there Blinger hed kep' straight."
The boy rode half a dozen races in the next month, all of them for two-year-olds. He won once and was second twice. Among the other apprentice riders he was already a personage, although, of course, he scarcely dared speak to the full-fledged jockeys.
And then the Terror came.
It was Gracious that brought it. There were eight two-years-olds in the seven-furlong sprint on the main track at Morris Park. The filly had gone slightly off her feed the night before the race, but she seemed perfectly fit otherwise, and Faulkner determined to start her.
"She won't finish as strong as she would a week ago," he told the boy, as the saddling bugle blew. "So you send her along a bit at the start and get the rail. Keep her goin' an' let her die in front."
"I reck'n," said Tim confidently, and they swung him into the saddle.
Gracious, under Tim's riding, was a quick breaker. She leaped away the instant the barrier rose, and from the middle of the track the boy took her to the rail before the run up the back-stretch was over. She held her lead till the field had rounded into the stretch, and then he felt her falter. In an instant he began to ride, first with hands, then with hands and feet, then with hands and feet and whip. But it was not in the filly to answer. At the six-furlong pole she had gone stale—gone stale between two jumps. But the boy kept at her with might and main.
"TIM AND HIS MOTHER HAD LEFT THEIR LITTLE CABIN AT THE FIRST CRACK OF DAWN"
It was useless. In six strides a brown muzzle crept up to his saddle girth. In two jumps more it reached the filly's shoulder. In three more strides the two were head and head; and then the brown muzzle was in front.
Suddenly the brown muzzle drooped, and the colt faltered. Tim took heart again. Perhaps, perhaps he might still nurse the filly home in front. He gripped her withers a bit tighter with his knees and spoke to her, softly and pleadingly, as was his wont, through his clenched teeth:
"Come on, yew gal—come on, yew baby—come jes' once mo'—jes' once—we's mos' home now—come—come. Come, yew gal!"
Back to the boy's stirrup came the saddle girth of the brown colt, as his stride shortened under the staggering drive. Tim's heart leaped in his bosom, for there was the wire not ten jumps away and—he was going to win.
"Come—come, yew baby," he whispered almost into the filly's ear, as he leaned far over her nodding head. The ecstasy of victory thrilled his small body to his very toes.
At that instant the brown colt swerved against him. The pungent odor of sweating horseflesh smote his nostrils—the roar of a horrified crowd filled his ears—the track rose up to meet him. A flash of red enveloped his brain—then came darkness and oblivion.
When he came to himself, the first faint light of dawn was sifting in through a window somewhere. "Time I was up fer exercisin'," he thought, and he struggled to rise. A flash of pain in his left arm turned him faint and sick. As he wondered over this, he became aware of a dull, steady roar that filled the room.
Again he opened his eyes. Dimly he made out the form of a white-capped woman standing over him. Then he knew that he was not lying in the loft at Sheepshead Bay.
"Are you awake, little boy?" said a soft voice.
"I—I reck'n," said Tim faintly.
There came the rattle of a heavy vehicle pounding over pavements, the shrill shriek of a whistle, the roar of horses' hoofs.
Then he remembered it all and turned his face to the wall.
That same evening Faulkner came in to see him.
"Well, Tim," he said, "'twas a bad tumble, hey? How d'you feel? better?"
"Sure," said the boy feebly.
"That's fine, that's fine," cried the trainer heartily. "'Twa'n't your fault. You done fine. You'd 'a' won, sure, 'f that chump Reilly had kep' his colt straight. But don't you care. We'll have you out in a few days, the Doc says. I telegraphed the Colonel you was all to the good, an' he'll tell yer ma, so don't you worry about that, kid." He leaned over, smiled kindly, and put a huge hand on the boy's head.
It smelled horribly of sweaty horseflesh. With a shudder Tim turned his head away.
"You musn't mind a little thing like a tumble," said the trainer anxiously. "They all get 'em. Why, I remember when I was ridin' a hoss named ——"
And the kindly horseman blundered on in an attempt to cheer the helpless lad. It seemed to Tim that he simply must cry out to him to stop, when the nurse came swiftly up and warned the trainer not to stay any longer.
"Well, so long, kid," was Faulkner's parting word. "Oh, 'course yer busted arm won't let yer ride again this fall, but the season's most over anyway. Only two more days o' Morris Park, and y' know we ain't got any cheap ones to start at Aqueduct. Anythin' I kin do f' you?" Tim opened his eyes again.
"Filly hurted?" he asked faintly.
The trainer laughed.
"Nothin' to hurt," he said. "Skinned her knees a bit, but I was goin' to put her out o' trainin' anyhow. She's O.K."
To Tim's unspeakable relief he lumbered away.
With his arm in a sling, Tim was out again at the end of a week. Much against the boy's will, Faulkner took him one day to the meeting at Aqueduct. There the trainer was soon surrounded by professional colleagues, and Tim fled to a seat in the highest row of the grandstand. Thence he looked down upon the first stages of a six-furlong sprint, but when three horses labored home in a tight-fit finish he buried his face in his hands that he might not see them.
When he lifted his face again, he glanced furtively about, thankful, oh, so thankful, that nobody had noticed him.
Then self-scorn descended upon him. If he could only go away somewhere and die! Furtively, he wept, wiping the tears away with one pudgy, brown fist. For some minutes he stared, heavy-eyed and broken, at his feet.
"Ta-ra-ta-ta-ta! Ta-ra-ta-ta!"
The bugle spoke, calling the handicap horses to the post.
Tim started up and edged toward the aisle. His racing feet carried him in panic half way down to the lawn. One idea possessed him—to get away—to hide himself, he didn't care where—anywhere where he couldn't see the horses run.
A hand seized him by the shoulder and spun him around.
"Hey, kid," said a voice, "how you feelin'? All to the mustard, hey?"
It was Bud Noble, star jockey of the Holland stable, radiant with all the prestige that comes with twenty thousand a year and the adulation of the racing public.
"I reck'n," said Tim, and fled again.
He had no notion of flight. His feet bore him along unsentiently. Suddenly they stopped. And then he knew that he couldn't run away. He must see that race. Something within him that would not be denied commanded it. Slowly he retraced his steps, muttering unconsciously: "I gotter do it. I gotter do it."
Presently he found himself back in the top row of the grandstand. As in a dream, he watched the parade of brilliant colors to the post. As in a dream, he saw the barrier flash up. The old-time roar "They're off!" came faint and faraway to his ears. Dreamlike, the field drifted up the back stretch, rounded the turn, and straightened out for home. He dug the fingers of his one good hand into the hard wooden bench and held his eyes upon the horses.
"I gotter do it. I gotter do it," he muttered still.
They were years in reaching the wire. No mortal thoroughbreds ever ran so slowly before since time began. But at last, at the end of the world, they finished. And up on the highest bench of the grandstand a little boy, with white face and wide eyes, sat back, limp and still.
Tim's arm was still in a sling when he got back to Lexington, and it was January before he could use it to any effect. The intervening weeks he spent at home, helping his mother as best he could in the round of her hard life, running her errands and bearing to and fro the various washings by which she lived. For the first time in his life it worried him to see her work so hard.
"A NEGRO GROOM WAS HOLDING A BIG BAY HORSE, ABOUT WHICH FALKNER WAS BUSILY WORKING"
"Nivver mind, Tim," she would say, lifting her bent back from the tub in the corner of the kitchen, "soon you'll be the famous jockey wid thousands a year. Thin it's your ould mother that'll be wearin' the fine duds and wurruk no more."
And then the boy, sick with shame and fear, would steal from the house—anywhere to be out of the sight of her and the sound of her voice.
Sometimes the Terror would grip him in his sleep, in the middle of the winter night, when the wind shrieked under the shingles on the cabin roof or the cold rain drove against the window-pane. More than once he started up, broad awake, with the smell of sweating horseflesh sharp and agonizing in his nostrils. Once it was the sound of his own voice that woke him, and he was crying out:
"Come on, yew baby, come, come, yew gal!"
Then he sat on the edge of his cot, with the blanket over his shoulders, until daybreak, with such thoughts as a boy may know.
But on a sunny morning in February, it was Tim who stood in the great doorway of the stallion stable at The Vale, saying to the Colonel:
"Thought mebbe I could help yew with the two-year-olds."
Day by day he strove with himself. Little by little he fought the Terror down. The very smell of the stables turned him faint for a week. He used to creep into King Faraway's box-stall when the big horse stood, wet under his blanket, after his morning gallop, and bury his face in the stallion's mane and rub his nose along the giant withers, till at last the horrible smell of sweating horseflesh had power to terrify him no more. It was weeks before he could mount without trembling, but at last he came to do it and—to hope.
At last came April, and one evening, as Tim was helping with the feeding, he heard the Colonel's voice calling him. He trembled a little, for he knew what was coming.
"I've a letter from Faulkner," said the Colonel, "and he's asking for you, Tim. Shall I tell him you'll be up with the new batch of youngsters?" It was the cast of the die.
"I reck'n," said Tim stoutly.
But it wasn't quite the same old Sheepshead Bay that Tim went back to. He did his work as faithfully and skilfully as ever. His hand was just as light and sure; he had not lost his sense of pace. But the first pale light of day did not send him out to the stables with every nerve in his lithe body tingling for very joy of the work that was coming. And once, when he saw a stable-boy thrown—the Terror rose at him again; not with the old terrible leap, to be sure, but he saw Its face for an instant.
He will never forget his first race that spring. Again he rode a two-year-old, and he won without difficulty, nobody guessed at what expense. As the season went on, he rode again and again, and sometimes he won, and oftener not.
But Faulkner saw and shook his head. If Tim's horse won, it was because its own speed and the judgment of its rider did it. Nobody ever saw Tim take a chance. Other boys might leave him space to squeeze through if they liked. He never did it. It was the longest way 'round and plain sailing for Tim. No mad, brilliant rush for the rail. No fine finishes from unlucky beginnings.
And Faulkner watched and saw it all. Once the boy caught the trainer looking at him, thoughtful and puzzled. A big lump rose in his throat and strangled him, and he stumbled away with his grief. It seemed to him that he could not live on any longer. He grew even more grave and silent as the days went on, shunned the other stable-boys, and kept stolidly to himself.
It had to end sometime, somehow, and the ending of it was notable—because Tim was Tim, I suppose.
For the Suburban Handicap, with the Brooklyn the greatest of the classic races for the older horses, the Holland stable had two candidates. The first was the five-year-old Gladstone, son of Juniper and winner of fifteen races, one of them a Metropolitan. The second was Kate Greenaway, a three-year-old filly by King Faraway, whose only claim to distinction was that she had won third place in the Futurity of the preceding year. But, though Gladstone was the stable's main reliance, the filly's work had been dazzling, and the shrewd Faulkner had hopes of her.
Bud Noble, as stable jockey, was to ride Gladstone, while the trainer relied on the light-weight Ban Johnson, on whom the stable had second call, to handle Kate Greenaway. Tim knew the filly as no one else knew her or could know her. Down at The Vale, before ever he came to the races, he had been the first to put halter and bridle on her; his small legs were the first to bestride her; he had broken her to the barrier until she seemed actually to like the thing, and in her work she had been his especial charge. But he had never ridden her in a race.
The running of a big handicap at a Metropolitan track is an impressive event, even to the man who knows nothing of horses. To him who loves the thoroughbred it is inspiring. To Tim it was something more than that—a thing to make you tremble.
All morning the boy hung uneasily about the stable. He ate scarcely any dinner and roved restlessly about until it was time to take the filly to the paddock. He got her there just as the horses were going to the post for the third race. The Suburban was the fourth. Up and down under the great shed he walked his charge, blanketed and hooded, in the wake of towering, black Gladstone. Soon a shouting from the grandstand announced that the third race was over.
Then came a rush of hundreds to see the Suburban horses saddled. One by one, the candidates filed out to the track for their warming-up gallops—Boston, top-weight, favorite and winner of the Metropolitan, and second in the Brooklyn; Carley, winner of the Advance the season before; Catchall, the speedy Hastings mare; and all the rest—all save Kate Greenaway. Once, in a warming-up gallop, she had run away, and Faulkner would never take chances with her after that. So Tim walked her up and down by herself, thankful, yet ashamed, that somebody else was to ride her.
Suddenly the stable foreman ran up.
"Hi, you Tim," he shouted, "hustle over to the dressin' room an' git on yer duds. Skin along, now, no time to lose."
Tim stood gaping.
"Git a move on—git a move! My Gawd! You ain't got no time to lose. Ban's fell down an' sprained his ankle."
Tim trudged over to the jockey's house, his eyes on the ground. Over in the paddock, Faulkner listened stubbornly to the foreman.
"I tell you," the latter was saying, "the kid's lost his nerve. Ain't you seen it all along? He ain't took a chance sence his tumble. Why dontcher give the mount to Tyson or Biff Barry? They ain't neither of 'em got a mount."
"Nothin' doin'," rejoined the trainer. "The kid knows the filly—brought her up, almost. He can ride, too, if he don't get in a tight place, an' that ain't likely. Tyson can't make the weight. B'sides, I told the Colonel I'd give the kid a chance. An'," he concluded, "this is it."
"All right," said the foreman, "but you'll see. He's lost his nerve. Why, he got white eraoun' the gills when I tol' him."
"HE SAT ON THE EDGE OF HIS COT, WITH THE BLANKET OVER HIS SHOULDERS, UNTIL DAYBREAK"
Tim had grown like a weed since he first saw Sheepshead Bay, but it was a slender, fragile figure that the trainer tossed into the chestnut filly's saddle when the bugle blew.
"Now, kid," said Faulkner quietly, throwing one arm over the crupper, "you're third from the rail. You know the filly as well as I do. She's fit to the minute. She'll run in 2.03, if she ain't rushed in the first half. Hold yer place an' let the sprinters do their sprintin'. They'll come back. Keep her goin' her pace for a mile, an' if you have to ride her the last quarter, make her sweat for it. She's game fer a drive. They don't make 'em no gamer."
The lad heard scarcely a word. He wasn't frightened. He was sullen, rebellious against—against everything. It was one more race to him—commonplace, perfunctory, tiresome. He was going to get through with it in the easiest way he could. He thought with relief of the wide spaces and easy turns of the great track.
"Keep up yer nerve, kid," said Bud Noble, turning in his saddle and looking back at Tim as the field filed through the paddock gate.
Tim grinned scornfully. What a notion! Why should anybody need nerve to gallop a horse around a track? He had only one idea—to keep out of trouble. So, perfectly calm and very much bored, he danced to the starting-gate on the chestnut filly. He paid little attention to the fretful doings there. He was haunted by no fear that he might be left. It was a nuisance to have to keep an eye on the vicious heels of Baldy, the swayback gelding at his left—that was all.
But Kate Greenaway had no intention of being left. She kept her dainty nose on the webbing from the instant she got it there, for hadn't Tim taught her that? And when, at last, all the fussing and fuming was over, and the whips of the starter's assistants had ceased their hissing, and the pleadings and threats of the starter himself were done, and the gate swished up before the fourteen racers, the filly's first bound beat the gate by half a length.
Tim was a trifle disgusted. "Blast the filly, anyhow!" he thought. It was no part of his plan to lead that roaring field. He took a double wrap on the reins, and his mount came back till two lithe, lean forms slid up abreast her on the rail, and a third on the outside. That was better, thought Tim, and the sprinters drew out ahead of him. Contentedly he fell in on the rail behind them.
A storm of dirt clods smote the filly in the face. Another pelted Tim on the forehead. He took a tighter hold on Kate Greenaway, and the sprinters drew away another length. It would have been an easy thing for him to choke her back still further, but somehow a surge of generous feeling for the game creature beat down his sullen selfishness, and he hadn't the heart to strangle her.
"IN HIS EARS WAS THE ROAR FROM THIRTY THOUSAND THROATS IN THE GRANDSTAND"
The leaders had by this time swung around the first turn, and as they passed the half-mile mark two noses intruded themselves on Tim's vision on the outside.
"Hello," he thought, "old long-distance Boston is movin' up. An' Carley, to keep him from gettin' lonesome." But the track was wide, they ran straight and true and kept their distance.
Suddenly the sprinters began to come back. In five seconds Tim would have to pull up behind them. This was disgusting! If only he were on the outside! A clod of earth struck his breast. Instinctively he let out a wrap on the reins.
The filly went up to the sprinters in ten jumps. As he ranged alongside, Tim took another hold on her. No more front positions for him. He was outside, and he meant to stay there and be derned to 'em!
Then one of the sprinters fell back, beaten already, and as Boston somehow sifted into the vacant place Tim noted with a gasp that here was the far turn already, and he was with the leaders. This surprised him so much that the last turn leaped past before he realised that there were only two horses between him and the rail. One of them was black Boston, top-weight at one hundred and twenty-nine; the other was Carley.
He was getting a bit interested in spite of himself. The boys on the older horses began to urge them a bit, and as they swung around the turn and into the stretch they drew away a couple of lengths. Tim sat still. He was in that delightful outside place, with acres of room. He even glanced over at the in-field where the patrol judge stood with his glasses to his eyes. He remembered afterward that that official's weird whiskers amused him. Then something happened.
Kate Greenaway became mistress of herself. As she swung round the turn, a wide space confronted her, left by the leaders between themselves and the rail. Kate Greenaway had been taught to hunt that rail as a homing pigeon its cote. She sought it now so sharply that Tim all but lost his seat.
Instantly the boy awoke. He remembered the prize he was riding for—the Suburban! the Suburban! Straight before him for a quarter of a mile gleamed the track, yellow in the June sunlight. Nothing to do but ride—straight—straight to the wire.
All the slumbering life in his body awoke from its sullen sleep. He blessed the splendid filly racing so true and so strong beneath him, and he sat down for the first time to help her with every ounce of his power and every trace of his skill.
He knew she could win. He knew she had been going well within herself, and still she was where she could strike. Now was the time to ride, and he rode as he had never ridden before, standing in the stirrups, crouched over the gallant filly's neck, rising and falling in perfect rhythm with her every stride. And, bless her! that stride had not begun to shorten yet.
Steadily she crept up on the older horses fighting their duel before her. Tim could see from the tail of his eye that both their riders were working for dear life—and he had only just begun to ride. His heart bounded again beneath his brilliant jacket, and again he urged the filly.
But what was that? Surely, surely his path was growing narrower. In six strides more he was sure of it. Carley, on the outside, was boring in under the drive, and Boston was pulling in to keep from fouling.
There's no time to pick daisies in the last furlong of the Suburban. All the months of Tim's purgatory called to him to pull up before they squeezed him against that deadly rail. He tried to do it, but his wrists had gone limp. The next instant the bay and the black were running stride for stride half a length before the filly—and closing in.
Then rose the Terror and gripped Tim by the throat. The moment had come. They had pinned him on the rail.
Under the gruelling drive Carley staggered again. He bumped Boston. Tim felt the big horse graze his boot as he wavered. Instantly that pungent smell of sweating horseflesh stung his nostrils, and with it flashed the memory of that awful day to smite him helpless.
Again he tried to pull up, and again he failed. His wrists were palsied. Why didn't he fall! Oh, why didn't he fall!
Under his quaking knees the withers of the gallant filly still rose and fell, mightily, rhythmically; her lean, beautiful neck stretched out as if to meet the goal, her nostrils wide and blood-red, through which the air came and went, roaring, like the escape of steam from a mighty valve, her eyeballs starting from their sockets.
Then sickening shame smote him on his quivering lips. He seemed to realise for the first time that the filly was waging her terrible fight alone.
The Terror dropped from the boy like a bad dream when one awakes. A frenzy of pride and love for the filly swept over him. He had no hope. The next instant he would hear that terrified roar of the crowd, the track would leap up to meet him, that flash of red would smite him, and blackness would fold him about. But the beautiful filly should not go down with a coward astride her! He found himself talking to her as of old, crouching low till his lips all but brushed her fine, straight ears:
"Come on, yew gal! Katie—yew Katie! Come on! Almos' home! Almos'! Come—come, yew darlin'!"
Closer pressed the driven Boston, till his rider's stirrup locked Tim's. And then the boy knew that the last moment had come. It was fall or win and instantly. In his ears was the creak and protest of the straining saddles and girths, the roar from thirty thousand throats in the grandstand, the whistle of the breath of three great horses locked in a desperate struggle, the thunder of the flying hoofs behind him. He had the right of way—let them unbar it, or crash to destruction—all three!
Gripping the reins with his right hand, he raised his whip in his left and let it fall, once—twice—three times. Somewhere in her straining, breathless, driven body the filly had one ounce more left. Gallantly, instantly, she gave it. The rail grazed the boy's left boot. His right was driven up to the filly's loins.
She faltered—but she was through—through that strangling pocket, reeling, staggering, half-blind and splendid, and the Suburban was hers by a nod.
They lifted Tim in the famous floral horse-shoe, and they cheered and cheered him again. "Grandest finish I ever see," said Faulkner, and "My Gawd! what a drive!" said the stable foreman, gaping.
But to little Tim it meant only one thing—the greatest, most beautiful thing that could be—the Terror was gone forever. He took a deep breath and looked about him on a new world.
JAPAN'S
STRENGTH IN WAR
BY
GENERAL KUROPATKIN
TRANSLATED BY GEORGE KENNAN
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
Although the trial of war through which our country and our army passed in 1904-5 is now a subject for history, the material thus far collected is not sufficiently abundant to enable the historian to estimate fairly the events that preceded the war, nor to give a detailed explanation of the defeats that we sustained in the course of it. It is urgently necessary, however, that we should make immediate use of our recent experience, because by ascertaining the nature of our mistakes and the weaknesses of our troops we may learn what means should be adopted to increase, hereafter, the material and spiritual strength of our military force.
In times past, when wars were carried on by small standing armies, defeats did not affect the every-day interests of the whole nation so profoundly as they affect them now, when the obligation to render military service is general, and when, in time of war, most of our soldiers are drawn from the great body of the people. If a war is to be successful, in these days, it must be carried on, not by an army, but by an armed nation, and in such a contest all sides of the national life are more seriously affected and all defeats are more acutely felt than they were in times past.
When the national pride has been humiliated by failure in war, attempts are usually made to ascertain what brought about the failure and who was responsible for it. Some persons attribute it to general causes, others to special causes. Some censure the system, or the régime, while others throw the blame on particular individuals. I have been so closely connected with immensely important events in the Far East, and have been responsible to such an extent for the failure of our military operations there, that I can hardly hope to take an absolutely dispassionate and objective view of the persons and matters that I shall deal with in the present work; but my object is not so much to justify myself by replying to the charges that have been brought against me personally as to furnish material that will make it easier for the future historian to state fairly the reasons for our defeat, and thus render possible the adoption of measures that will prevent such defeats hereafter. The army that Russia put into the field in 1904-5 was unable, in the time allowed, to conquer the Japanese; and yet Japan, only a short time before the war began, had no regular army and was regarded by us as a second-class Power. How was she able to win a complete victory over Russia at sea, and to defeat a powerful Russian army on land? Many writers will study this question and, in time, they will give us a comprehensive answer to it; but I shall confine myself, in the present work, to an enumeration of the most broad and general reasons for Japanese success. Among the most important of such reasons is the following:—we did not fully appreciate the material and moral strength of Japan and did not regard a conflict with her seriously enough.[A]
The Secret Growth of Japan's Army
The Japanese first became our neighbors when, in the reign of Peter the Great, we acquired the peninsula of Kamchatka. In 1860, by virtue of the Treaty of Peking, we took peaceful possession of the extensive Usuri territory; moved down to the boundary of Korea; and obtained an outlet on the Sea of Japan. This sea, which is almost completely enclosed by Korea and the Japanese islands, was immensely important to the whole adjacent coast of the main land; but as the straits that connected it with the ocean were in the hands of the Japanese, we might easily be prevented by them from getting free access to the Pacific. When we acquired the island of Sakhalin, we obtained an outlet through the Tartar Strait; but that was all we had, and during a large part of the time it was frozen over.
For a long time, Japan lived a life that was wholly apart from ours and did not particularly attract our attention. We knew the Japanese as extremely skilful and patient artisans; we were fond of the things that they made; and we were charmed with the delicacy and bright coloring of their artistic products; but, from a military point of view, we took no interest in them and regarded them as a weak nation. Our sailors always spoke with sympathetic appreciation of the country and its inhabitants, and were delighted to stay in Japanese ports—especially Nagasaki, where they were liked and favorably remembered; but our travellers, diplomats, and naval officers entirely overlooked the awakening of an energetic, independent people.
In 1867, the army of Japan consisted of nine battalions of infantry, two squadrons of cavalry, and eight batteries, and numbered only 10,000 men. This force, which formed the cadre of the present army, had French teachers and adopted from the latter the French uniform. After the Franco-German war of 1870-71, German officers took the places of the French instructors; military service was made a national obligation; and Japanese officers were sent to Europe, every year, for the purpose of study. At the time of her war with China, Japan had an army consisting of seven infantry divisions; but finding herself unable, at the end of that war, to retain the fruits of her victory, on account of her weakness both on land and at sea, she made every possible effort to create an army and a fleet that would be strong enough to protect her interests. On the 19th of March, 1896, the Mikado issued a decree providing for such a reorganization of the army as would double its strength in the course of seven years. This reorganization was completed in 1903. Our military and naval authorities did not overlook the creation and development in Japan of a strong army and fleet; but they confined themselves to the collection and tabulation of statistics. We kept an account of every ship built and every division of troops organized; but we did not estimate highly enough these beginnings of Japan, and did not admit the possibility of measuring her fighting-power by European standards. The latest information that we had with regard to her military strength, prior to the late war, was compiled by our General Staff from the reports of Colonel Vannofski and other Russian military agents in Tokio. It showed that her army, on a peace footing, numbered 8,116 officers and 133,457 men (not including the troops in Formosa); and on a war footing, 10,735 officers (not including reserve officers) and 348,074 men, with perhaps 50,000 untrained reserve recruits. There was no mention of additional reserve forces.
Russian Generals Pigeonhole Reports of Japan's Fighting Strength
In 1903 Colonel Adabash, who had just visited Japan, gave to General Zhilinski, of our General Staff, very important information with regard to new reserves which the Japanese were organizing for service in case of war. Inasmuch, however, as this information did not agree at all with that previously furnished by Colonel Vannofski, General Zhilinski did not give it credence. A few months later, Captain Rusine, a very talented officer who was acting as naval observer in Japan, made a similar report upon Japanese reserves to his superiors, and extracts from it were furnished to General Sakharoff, Chief of Staff of the army. Although the information contained in this report ultimately proved to be perfectly accurate, the report was pigeonholed, simply because Generals Zhilinski and Sakharoff did not believe it; and in our compendium of data with regard to the military strength of Japan in 1903-4, no reference whatever was made to additional reserve forces. According to the figures of our General Staff, therefore, the total number of available men in the standing army, the territorial army, and the regular reserve of Japan, was a little more than 400,000.[B]
Stereograph copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood
SCHOOL CHILDREN BEING DRILLED IN MILITARY TACTICS NEAR TOKIO, JAPAN
VISCOUNT KATSURA
PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN DURING THE RUSSIAN-JAPANESE WAR
Recently published official reports of General Kipke, Chief Medical Inspector of the Japanese army, show that the loss of the Japanese in killed and wounded, in the course of the war, was as follows:
| Killed | 47,387 |
| Wounded | 173,425 |
| Total | 220,812 |
Their loss in killed, wounded, and sick was 554,885—a number considerably greater than the whole force which, according to the figures of our General Staff, they could put into the field. They sent 320,000 sick and wounded back from Manchuria to Japan.
Other available information is to the effect that the bodies of 60,624 killed were buried in the cemetery of honor in Tokio, and that, in addition to these, 75,545 men died from wounds or disease. The Japanese thus admit the loss of 135,000 men by death.[C]
Their Chief Medical Inspector says that their killed and wounded amounted to 14.58 per cent of their entire force, from which it would appear that they put into the field against us troops of various categories to the number of 1,500,000—or more than three times the estimate of our General Staff. In view of these facts, it is evident that our information with regard to their fighting strength was insufficient. At the time when they had hundreds of avowed and secret agents in the Far East, studying the strength of our land and naval forces, we entrusted the collection of data with regard to their military strength and resources to a single officer of the General Staff, and, unfortunately, our military observers were not always well selected. One of these experts in Japanese affairs said, in Vladivostok, before hostilities began, that, in the event of war, we might count on one Russian soldier as equal to three Japanese. After the first engagements he moderated his tone and admitted that it might be necessary to put one Russian against every Japanese. At the end of another month he declared that, in order to win victories, we must meet every Japanese soldier in the field with three Russians. Another of our military agents, who had been in Japan, predicted authoritatively that Port Arthur would fall in a very short time, and that immediately thereafter the same fate would overtake Vladivostok. I sharply reprimanded the faint-hearted babbler and threatened to dismiss him from the army if he continued to make such injurious and inopportune remarks.
Moral Superiority of the Japanese
But it was not only with regard to Japan's material strength that our information was insufficient. We underestimated, or entirely overlooked, her moral strength. According to that great leader Napoleon, three fourths of an army's success in war is due to the moral character of its soldiers. This relation of moral character to material success still exists, although the conditions of battle, in these days, are more trying than they were in the Napoleonic wars. And now, more than ever before, the moral strength of the army depends upon the temper of the nation. Armies are now so organized that, in case of war, soldiers are drawn, for the most part, from the reserves. A successful war, therefore, must be a popular war, and victory must be attained by the hearty coöperation of the whole people with its Government. The recent contest in Manchuria was a popular war for the Japanese, but not for us. The Korean question, and the question of naval supremacy on the waters of the Pacific, involved vital Japanese interests, and the immense importance of these interests was so clearly understood and so fully appreciated by the Japanese people that the war for their protection was a national war. Japan spent ten years in preparing for it, and then the whole nation carried it on. Japanese soldiers, deeply conscious of the bearing that their exploits might have on the future of the country, fought with a self-sacrificing devotion and a stubbornness that we had never seen in any war in which we had previously been engaged. Sometimes, in villages that we had taken by assault, a handful of Japanese soldiers would barricade themselves in native houses and die there rather than retreat or surrender. Japanese officers who fell into our hands—even wounded officers—generally committed suicide.
GENERAL TERAUCHI
JAPANESE MINISTER OF WAR
It is quite possible that when we have a true history of the war based on Japanese sources of information, our pride may receive another blow. We already know that in many cases we outnumbered the enemy, and still we were not victorious. The explanation of this, however, is very simple. The Japanese, in these cases, were inferior to us materially, but they were stronger than we morally.[D] To this aspect of the struggle we should give particular attention, because military history shows that, in all wars, the antagonist who is strongest morally wins the victory. The only exceptions are such contests as that between the English and the Boers in South Africa and that between the North and the South in America. The English were weaker than the Boers morally, but they put into the field an overwhelming force, and, in spite of many defeats, they finally conquered. In the American war, the army of the South was in the same position that the Boer army was, and the Northerners had to put a superior force into the field in order to overcome it.
Extraordinary Popularity of the War in Japan
Among the sources of moral strength that failed to attract our attention in Japan were the following: The training of her citizens had long been patriotic and warlike in tendency; her educational system had inculcated an ardent love of country; and even in her primary schools children were prepared, from their earliest years, to be soldiers. The people regarded the army with profound respect and trust, and young men served in it with pride. All these things we failed to see, and we overlooked also the iron discipline enforced in the army and the rôle played in it by the samurai officers. We wholly failed to appreciate, moreover, the vital importance of the Korean question to Japan, and the strength of the hostile feeling that was raised against us when the Japanese were deprived of the fruits of their victory after their war with China. The party of Young Japan had long insisted upon war with Russia and had been restrained only by a prudent Government.
Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood
GENERAL KODAMA
CHIEF STAFF OFFICER OF THE JAPANESE ARMY IN MANCHURIA
When the war began, we recovered our powers of perception, but it was then too late. And at that time, when the war was not only unpopular in Russia but incomprehensible to the Russian people, the Japanese, with a great outburst of enthusiastic patriotism, were responding, like a single man, to the call to arms. In some cases Japanese mothers even killed themselves, when their sons, on account of weakness or ill health, were denied admission to the army. Hundreds of men volunteered to undertake the most desperate enterprises, in the face of certain death; and many officers and soldiers, before going to the front, had funeral ceremonies performed over their bodies, in order to show that they intended to die for their native land. The youth of the Empire crowded into the army, and the heads of the most distinguished families sought to serve their country by enlisting themselves, by sending their sons to the front, or by helping to pay the expenses of the war. Some Japanese regiments, in attacking our positions, threw themselves with the cry of "Banzai!" upon our obstructions, struggled over or through them, filled our ditches with the bodies of their dead, and then, rushing across upon the corpses of their comrades, forced their way into our entrenchments. The army and the whole people appreciated the importance of the war, understood the significance of the events that were taking place, and were ready to make sacrifices in order to achieve success.
Military Training of Japanese Children
After the Japanese-Chinese war, of which I made a most careful and detailed study, I myself was inspired with a feeling of respect for the Japanese army and watched its growth with anxiety. Then, in 1900, the part played by the Japanese troops that coöperated with ours in the province of Pechili confirmed me in the belief that they were excellent soldiers. During my short stay in Japan, I was unable to acquaint myself thoroughly with the country and its military forces, but what I did learn was enough to convince me that the results attained by the Japanese in the course of twenty-five or thirty years were astounding. I saw a beautiful country, with a large and industrious population. Intense activity prevailed everywhere, and I was impressed by the people's joy in life, their love of country, and their faith in their future. In their military school, where I saw a Spartan system of education, the exercises of the cadets with pikes, rifles, and broadswords were not approached by anything of the kind that I had witnessed in Europe,—it was fighting of the fiercest character. At the end of the struggle there was a hand-to-hand combat, which lasted until the victors stood triumphant over the bodies of the vanquished and tore off their masks. In these exercises, which were very severe, the cadets struck one another fiercely and with wild cries; but the moment a prearranged signal was given, or the fight came to an end, the combatants drew themselves up in a line and their faces assumed an expression of wooden composure.
Stereograph copyrighted by the H. C. White Co.
MARSHAL OYAMA
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IN MANCHURIA OF THE JAPANESE ARMY DURING THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR
In all the public schools prominence was given to military exercises, and the pupils took part in them with enthusiasm. Even in their walks they practised running, flanking, and sudden, unexpected attacks of one party on another. The history of Japan was everywhere made a means of strengthening the pupils' patriotism and their belief in Japan's invincibility. Particular stress was laid upon the country's successful wars, the heroes of them were extolled, and the children were taught that none of Japan's military enterprises had ever failed.
Japan's Material Resources
In the manufactories of arms I saw the turning out of rifles in immense numbers, and the work was being done swiftly, accurately, and cheaply. In Kobe and Nagasaki I inspected attentively the ship-building yards, where they were constructing not only torpedo boats but armored cruisers, and where all the work was being done by their own mechanics and foremen under the direction of their own engineers. At the great national exposition in Osaka there was a splendid and instructive display of the country's manufactures, including textiles, products of cottage industry, complicated instruments, grand pianos, and guns of the largest caliber—all made in Japan, by Japanese workmen, and out of Japanese materials. I saw nothing of foreign origin except raw cotton and iron, which were imported from China and Europe. And the products displayed at this exposition were not more worthy of attention than the observant, courteous, and always dignified throng of Japanese visitors.
In the agriculture of Japan many of the methods were ancient, but the culture was unquestionably high. The fields were carefully worked, and the effort to make every foot of land yield all that it could, the struggle to raise crops even on the mountain sides, and the insufficiency of the country's food products despite this intensive culture, showed that the people were becoming overcrowded on their islands, and that the Korean question was for them a question of vital importance. I lived ten days among the fishermen, and saw something of the reverse side of Japan's rapid development under European conditions. Many complaints were made to me of heavy taxes, which had increased greatly in later years, and of the high cost of the necessaries of life.
I witnessed reviews of the Japanese troops, including the division of Guards, two regiments of the First Division, two regiments of cavalry, and many batteries. The marching was admirable, and the common soldiers appeared like our younkers. The officers and leaders of the Japanese army whom I saw and met made upon me a very favorable impression. The culture and knowledge of military affairs that many of them possessed would have given them places of honor in any army. With General Terauchi, the Japanese Minister of War, I had had friendly relations ever since 1886, when we met in France at the great manoeuvers directed by General Levalle. Among others whose acquaintance I made were Generals Yamagata, Oyama, Kodama, Fukushima, Nodzu, Hasegawa, and Murata, and the Imperial princes, Fushimi and Kanin. In spite of a terrible war, which has separated by a barrier nations that were apparently created for union and friendship, I still cherish a sympathetic feeling for my Tokio acquaintances. Especially do I remember with respect their ardent love of country and their devotion to their Emperor—feelings that they have since made manifest in deeds. I met also in Tokio many leaders in fields other than that of war, among whom were Ito, Katsura, and Komura. In the report that I made to the Emperor, after my return from Japan, I placed the military power of the Japanese on a level with that of European nations. I regarded one of our battalions as equal to two battalions of Japanese in defence, but I estimated that in attack we should have two battalions to their one. The test of war has shown that my conclusions were correct. There were lamentable cases, of course, in which the Japanese, with a smaller number of battalions, drove our forces from the positions that they occupied; but these results were due either to mistakes in the direction of our troops, or to numerical inferiority in the fighting strength of our battalions. In the last days of the battle of Mukden, some of our brigades consisted of hardly more than a thousand bayonets. It is evident that the Japanese had to put into the field only two or three battalions in order to deal successfully with a brigade of such depleted strength.
All that I saw and learned of Japan, or her military strength, and of the nature of her problems in the Far East, convinced me that it would be necessary for us to come to a peaceable understanding with her, and that we should have to make great concessions—concessions that, at first sight, might seem humiliating to our national pride—in order to avoid war with her. As I have already said, I did not hesitate even to propose the return of Port Arthur and Kwang-tung to China and the sale of the southern branch of the Eastern Chinese Railway. I foresaw that the threatened war would be extremely unpopular in Russia; that there would be no manifestation of patriotic spirit, on account of the people's ignorance of the objects of the war; and that the leaders of the anti-Government party would avail themselves of the opportunity to increase domestic discontent and disorder. I did not, however, anticipate that the Japanese would display so much energy, activity, courage, and lofty patriotism, and I therefore erred in my estimate of the time that the struggle would require. In view of the insufficiency of our railroad transportation, we should have allowed three years for the war, instead of the year and a half that I thought would be enough.
With all their strong points, the Japanese manifested weaknesses that may be shown again in future wars. I shall not enumerate them, but I will say that, in many cases, the outcome of the fight was in doubt, and that in other cases we escaped defeat only through the errors of the Japanese commanders. There is a saying that "the victor is not judged." I may add that to the victor is rendered homage, and this is true of the Japanese. The general tone of the whole press was favorable to them, and even their practical and well-balanced heads might well have been turned by the praise that they received. No one went further in this direction than Count Leo Tolstoi. In an article published in a foreign journal,[E] our gifted author and philosopher expressed the conviction that the Japanese defeated us because, owing to their warlike patriotism and the power of their ruling authorities, they are the mightiest nation on earth, and are not to be conquered by any one, either at sea or on land.
Stereograph copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood
JAPANESE ARMY TRANSPORTATION CORPS MOVING ONE OF THE GREAT SIEGE GUNS WHICH WERE USED IN THE DESTRUCTION OF PORT ARTHUR
The strength of Japan was in the complete union of her people, army, and government, and it was this union that gave her the victory. We carried on the contest with our army alone, and even the army was weakened by the unfavorable disposition of the people toward all things military. Our aims in the Far East were not understood by our officers and soldiers, and, furthermore, the general feeling of discontent which already prevailed in all classes of our population made the war so hateful that it aroused no patriotism whatever. Many good officers hastened to offer their services—a fact that is easily explained—but all ranks of society remained indifferent. A few hundreds of the common people volunteered, but no eagerness to enter the army was shown by the sons of our high dignitaries, of our merchants, or of our scientific men. Out of the tens of thousands of students who were then living in idleness,[F] many of them at the expense of the Empire, only a handful volunteered,[G] while at that very time, in Japan, sons of the most distinguished citizens—even boys fourteen and fifteen years of age—were striving for places in the ranks. Japanese mothers, as I have already said, killed themselves through shame, when their sons were found to be physically unfit for military service.
Russian Discipline Undermined by the Revolutionists
The indifference of Russia to the bloody struggle which her sons were carrying on—for little understood objects and in a foreign land—could not fail to discourage even the best soldiers. Men are not inspired to deeds of heroism by such an attitude toward them on the part of their country. But Russia was not merely indifferent. Leaders of the revolutionary party strove, with extraordinary energy, to multiply our chances of failure, hoping thus to facilitate the attainment of their own dark objects. There appeared a whole literature of clandestine publications, intended to lessen the confidence of officers in their superiors, to shake the trust of soldiers in their officers, and to undermine the faith of the whole army in the Government. In an "Address to the Officers of the Russian Army," published and widely circulated by the Social Revolutionists, the main idea was expressed as follows:
"The worst and most dangerous enemy of the Russian people—in fact, its only enemy—is the present Government. It is this Government that is carrying on the war with Japan, and you are fighting under its banners in an unjust cause. Every victory that you win threatens Russia with the calamity involved in the maintenance of what the Government calls 'order,' and every defeat that you suffer brings nearer the hour of deliverance. Is it surprising, therefore, that Russians rejoice when your adversary is victorious?"
But persons who had nothing in common with the Social Revolutionary party, and who sincerely loved their country, gave aid to Russia's enemies by expressing the opinion, in the press, that the war was irrational, and by criticizing the mistakes of the Government that had failed to prevent it. In a brochure entitled "Thoughts Suggested by Recent Military Operations," M. Gorbatoff referred to such persons as follows:
"But it is a still more grievous fact that while our heroic soldiers are carrying on a life-and-death struggle, these so-called friends of the people whisper to them: 'Gentlemen, you are heroes, but you are facing death without reason. You will die to pay for Russia's mistaken policy, and not to defend Russia's vital interests.' What can be more terrible than the part played by these so-called friends of the people when they undermine in this way the intellectual faith of heroic men who are going to their death? One can easily imagine the state of mind of an officer or soldier who goes into battle after reading, in newspapers or magazines, articles referring in this way to the irrationality and uselessness of the war. It is from these self-styled friends of the people that the revolutionary party gets support in its effort to break down the discipline of our troops."
Soldiers of the reserves, when called into active service, were furnished by the anti-Government party with proclamations intended to prejudice them against their officers, and similar proclamations were sent to the army in Manchuria. Troops in the field received letters apprising them of popular disorders in Russia, and men sick in hospitals, as well as men on duty in our advanced positions, read in the newspapers articles that undermined their faith in their commanders and their leaders. The work of breaking down the discipline of the army was carried on energetically, and, of course, it was not altogether fruitless. The leaders of the movement, in striving to attain their well defined objects, took for their motto: "The worse things are, the better"; and the ideal at which they aimed was the state of affairs brought about by the mutinous sailors on the armor-clad warship "Potemkin." These enemies of the army and the country were aided by certain other persons who were simply foolish and unreasonable. One can imagine the indignation that the Menchikoffs, the Kirilloffs and the Kuprins would feel, if they were told that they played the same part in the army that was played by the persons who incited the insubordination on the "Potemkin"; yet such was the case. It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine anything that could have been said to the sailors of the armor-clad for the purpose of exciting them against their officers that would have been worse than the language of Menchikoff, when, in writing of our army officers, he referred to their "blunted conscience, their drunkenness, their moral looseness, and their inveterate laziness." Firm in spirit though Russians might be, the indifference of one class of the population, and the seditious incitement of another, could hardly fail to have upon many of them an influence that was not favorable to the successful prosecution of war.
Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood
SCENE IN SHIBA PARK, TOKIO, WHERE TOGO'S NAVAL VICTORY WAS CELEBRATED WITH WILD ENTHUSIASM
Attacks of the Russian Press
The party opposed to the Government distributed among our troops, especially in the West, hundreds of thousands of seditious proclamations exhorting the soldiers to work for defeat rather than for victory. Writers for newspapers and magazines, even though they did not belong to the anti-Government party, contributed to its success by lavishing abuse upon the army and its representatives. War correspondents, who knew little about our operations and still less about those of the Japanese, and who based their statements, not upon what they had seen, but upon what they had heard from untrustworthy sources, increased the disaffection of the people by exaggerating the seriousness of our failures. Even army officers, writing from the theatre of war, or after returning to Russia for reasons that were not always creditable to them, sought to gain reputation by means of hasty criticism which was often erroneous in its statements of fact and generally discouraging or complaining in tone. On the fighting line, heroic men without number faced and fought the enemy courageously for months, without ever losing their faith in ultimate victory; but from that part of the field little trustworthy news came. Brave soldiers, modest junior officers, and the commanders of regiments, companies, squadrons, and batteries in our advanced positions, did not write and had no time to write of their own labors and exploits, and few of the correspondents were willing to share their perils for the sake of being able to observe and describe their heroic deeds. There were among the correspondents some brave men who sincerely wished to be of use; but their lack of even elementary training in military science made it impossible for them to understand the complicated problems of war, and their work therefore was comparatively unproductive. The persons best qualified to see and judge, and to give information to the reading public, were the foreign military observers, who were attached to our armies in the field and who, in many cases, were extremely fortunate selections. These officers felt a brotherly affection for the soldiers whose perils and hardships they shared, and were regarded by the latter with love and esteem. Their reports, however, are very long in coming to us.
Stereograph copyrighted by the H. C. White Co.
JAPANESE ARTILLERY TRANSPORTING A 7½ C. M. MOUNTAIN GUN ACROSS THE HILLS
Some of our correspondents, who lived in the rear of the army and saw the seamy side of the war, wrote descriptions of drunkenness, revelry, and profligacy (at Kharbin, for example) which distressed our reading public and gave a one-sided view of army life. Our press might have made our first defeats a means of rousing the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice; it might have exhorted the people to redouble their efforts as the difficulties of the war increased; it might have helped the Government to fill the gaps in our thinned ranks; it might have encouraged the faint-hearted, called forth the country's noblest sons, and opened to the army new sources of material and spiritual strength. But instead of doing any of these things, it played more or less into the hands of our foreign and domestic enemies; made the war hateful to the great mass of the population; depressed the spirits of soldiers going to the front, and undermined, in every way, the latter's faith in their officers and their rulers. This course of procedure did not rouse in the nation a determination to increase its efforts and to win victory at last, in spite of all difficulties. Quite the contrary! The soldiers who went to the front to fill up or reinforce our army carried with them seditious proclamations and the seeds of future defeats. Commanding officers in the Siberian military districts reported, as early as February, that detachments of supernumerary troops and reservists had plundered several railway stations, and at a later time regular troops, on their way to the front, were guilty of similar bad conduct. The drifting to the rear of large numbers of soldiers—especially the older reservists—while battles were in progress, was due not so much to cowardice as to the unsettling of the men's minds and to a disinclination on their part to continue the war. I may add that the opening of peace negotiations in Portsmouth, at a time when we were preparing for decisive operations, affected unfavorably the morale of the army's strongest elements.
The Russian Army Cut Off from the Nation
Mr. E. Martinoff, in an article entitled "Spirit and Temper of the Two Armies," points out that "even in time of peace, the Japanese people were so educated as to develop in them a patriotic and martial spirit. The very idea of war with Russia was generally popular, and throughout the contest the army was supported by the sympathy of the nation. In Russia, the reverse was true. Patriotism was shaken by the dissemination of ideas of cosmopolitanism and disarmament, and in the midst of a difficult campaign the attitude of the country toward the army was one of indifference, if not of actual hostility."
This judgment is accurate, and it is evident, of course, that with such a relation between Russian society and the Manchurian army, it was impossible to expect from the latter any patriotic spirit, or any readiness to sacrifice life for the sake of the fatherland. In an admirable article entitled "The Feeling of Duty and the Love of Country," published in the "Russian Invalid" in 1906, Mr. A. Bilderling expressed certain profoundly true ideas as follows:
"Our lack of success may have been due, in part, to various and complicated causes; to the misconduct of particular persons, to bad generalship, to lack of preparation in the army and the navy, to inadequacy of material resources, and to misappropriations in the departments of equipment and supply; but the principal reason for our defeat lies deeper, and is to be found in lack of patriotism, and in the absence of a feeling of duty toward and love for the fatherland. In a conflict between two peoples, the things of most importance are not material resources, but moral strength, exaltation of spirit, and patriotism. Victory is most likely to be achieved by the nation in which these qualities are most highly developed. Japan had long been preparing for war with us; all of her people desired it; and a feeling of lofty patriotism pervaded the whole country. In her army and her fleet, therefore, every man, from the commander-in-chief to the last soldier, not only knew what he was fighting for and what he might have to die for, but understood clearly that upon success in the struggle depended the fate of Japan, her political importance, and her future in the history of the world. Every soldier knew also that the whole nation stood behind him. With us, on the other hand, the war was unpopular from the very beginning. We neither desired it nor anticipated it, and, consequently, we were not prepared for it. Soldiers were hastily put into railway trains, and when, after a journey that lasted a month, they alighted in Manchuria, they did not know in what country they were, nor whom they were to fight, nor what the war was about. Even our higher commanders went to the front unwillingly and from a mere sense of duty. The whole army, moreover, felt that it was regarded by the country with indifference; that its life was not shared by the people; and that it was a mere fragment, cut off from the nation, thrown to a distance of nine thousand versts, and there abandoned to the caprice of fate. Before decisive fighting began, therefore, one of the contending armies advanced with the full expectation and confident belief that it would be victorious, while the other went forward with a demoralizing doubt of its own success."
Generally speaking, the man who conquers in war is the man who is least afraid of death. We were unprepared in previous wars, as well as in this, and in previous wars we made mistakes; but when the preponderance of moral strength was on our side, as in the wars with the Swedes, the French, the Turks, the Caucasian mountaineers and the natives of Central Asia, we were victorious. In the late war, for reasons that are extremely complicated, our moral strength was less than that of the Japanese; and it was this inferiority, rather than mistakes in generalship, that caused our defeats, and that forced us to make tremendous efforts in order to succeed at all. Our lack of moral strength—as compared with the Japanese—affected all ranks of our army, from the highest to the lowest, and greatly reduced our fighting power. In a war waged under different conditions—a war in which the army had the confidence and encouragement of the country—the same officers and the same troops would have accomplished far more than they accomplished in Manchuria. The lack of martial spirit, of moral exaltation, and of heroic impulse, affected particularly our stubbornness in battle. In many cases we did not have dogged resolution enough to conquer such antagonists as the Japanese. Instead of holding, with unshakable tenacity, the positions assigned them, our troops often retreated, and, in such cases, our commanding officers of all ranks, without exception, lacked the power or the means to set things right. Instead of making renewed and extraordinary efforts to wrest victory from the enemy, they either permitted the retreat of the troops under their command, or themselves ordered such retreat. The army, however, never lost its strong sense of duty; and it was this that enabled many divisions, regiments, and battalions to increase their power of resistance with every battle. This peculiarity of the late war, together with our final acquirement of numerical preponderance and a noticeable decline of Japanese ardor, gave us reason to regard the future with confidence, and left no room for doubt as to our ultimate victory.
The Failure of the Russian Fleet
Among other reasons for the success of the Japanese, I may mention the following.
The leading part in the war was to have been taken by our fleet. In the General Staff of the navy, as well as in that of the army, a detailed account was kept of all Japan's ships of war; but the directors of naval affairs in the Far East reckoned only tonnage, guns, and calibers, and when, in 1903, they found that the arithmetical totals of our Far Eastern fleet exceeded those of the entire Japanese fleet, they adopted, as a basis for our plan of operations, the following conclusions:
1. "The relation that the strength of the Japanese fleet bears to the strength of our fleet is such that the possibility of the defeat of the latter is inadmissible."
2. "The landing of the Japanese at Yinkow, or in Korea Bay, is not to be regarded as practicable."
The strength of the land force that a war with Japan would require depended upon three things: (1) the strength of the army that the Japanese could put into Manchuria, or across our boundary; (2) the strength of our fleet; and (3) the transporting capacity of the railway upon which our troops would have to depend in concentration. If our fleet could defeat the fleet of the Japanese, military operations on the main land would be unnecessary. And even if the Japanese were not defeated in a general naval engagement, they would either have to obtain complete mastery of the sea, or leave a considerable part of their army at home for the protection of their own coast. Without command of the sea, moreover, they could not risk a landing on the Liao-tung peninsula, but would have to march through Korea, and that would give us time for concentration. By their desperate night attack upon our fleet at Port Arthur, before the declaration of war,[H] they obtained a temporary superiority in armored vessels, and made great use of it in getting command of the sea. Our fleet—especially after the death of Admiral Makaroff at the most critical moment in the execution of the Japanese plan of campaign—offered no resistance to the enemy whatever. Even when they landed in the immediate vicinity of Port Arthur, we did not make so much as an attempt to interfere with them. The results of this inaction were very damaging to our army. The Japanese, instead of finding it impossible to land troops in Korea Bay, as our naval authorities anticipated, were able to threaten us with a descent along the whole coast of the Liao-tung peninsula, beginning at Kwang-tung. Notwithstanding our weakness on land, Admiral Alexeieff thought it necessary to authorize a wide scattering of our troops, so we prepared to meet the Japanese on the Yalu, at Yinkow, and in the province of Kwang-tung. He had also permitted a dispersal of our naval forces, so that we were weak everywhere.
Advantages Secured by Japan's Naval Victory
Instead of making a landing in Korea only,—as was anticipated in the plan worked out at Port Arthur,—the Japanese, with their immense fleet of transports, landed three armies on the Liao-tung peninsula and a fourth in Korea. Then, leaving one army in front of Port Arthur, they pushed the other three forward toward our forces, Which were slowly concentrating on the Haicheng-Liaoyang line in southern Manchuria. Thus, having taken the initiative at sea, they obtained the same advantage on land. Their command of the sea enabled them to disregard the defence of their own coast and move against us with their entire strength. In this way—contrary to our anticipations—they were able, in the first stage of the war, to put into the field a force that was superior to ours. Command of the sea, moreover, made it possible for them to supply their armies quickly with all necessary munitions, and to transport to the field, in a few days, masses of heavy supplies, which we, with our feeble railroad, were hardly able to get in months. But command of the sea, and the almost complete inactivity of our fleet, gave them another advantage, not less important, and that was the possibility of bringing safely to their ports and arsenals quantities of commissary and military stores, weapons, horses, and cattle, which had been ordered in Europe and America. Their line of communications, furthermore, was short and secure, while we were at a distance of eight thousand versts from our base of supplies and were connected with our country only by one weak line of railway. The advantage that they had over us in this respect was immense. The slow concentration of our army, which had to be brought eight thousand versts over a single-track railroad, gave them time, after the war began, to form new bodies of troops, in considerable numbers, and send them to the front. They had time enough, also, to supply their army with innumerable machine guns, after they had observed, in the early stages of the war, the importance of machine-gun fire.
The field of military operations in Manchuria had been familiar to the Japanese ever since their war with China. Its heat, its heavy rains, its mountains and its kiaoliang, were well known to them, because they had seen them all in their own country. In the mountains, especially, they felt perfectly at home, while a mountainous environment, to our troops, was oppressive. The Japanese, moreover, in their ten years of preparation for war with us, had not only studied Manchuria, but had secured there their own agents, who were of the greatest use to their army. The Chinese, I may add, assisted the Japanese, notwithstanding the severity and even cruelty with which the latter treated them.
The Japanese had a considerable advantage over us, also, in their high-powered ammunition, their machine guns, their innumerable mountain guns, their abundant supply of explosives, and their means of attack and defence in the shape of wire, mines, and hand grenades. Their organization, equipment, and transport carts were all better adapted to the field of operations than ours were, and their bodies of sappers were more numerous than ours.
The Japanese soldiers had been so trained as to develop self-reliance and ability to take the lead, and they were credited by foreign military observers with "intelligence, initiative, and quickness," In the fighting instructions that were given them, very material changes were made after the war began. At the outset, for example, night attacks were not recommended; but they soon satisfied themselves that night attacks were profitable and they afterward made great use of them. Major von Luwitz, of the German army, in a brochure entitled "The Japanese Attack in the War in Eastern Asia in 1904-05" says that while the Japanese did not neglect any means of making attacks effective, the secret of their success lay in their determination to get close to the enemy, regardless of consequences.
The Intellectual Superiority of the Japanese Soldier
The non-commissioned officers in the Japanese army were much superior to ours, on account of the better education and greater intellectual development of the Japanese common people. Many of them might have discharged the duties of commissioned officers with perfect success. The defects of our soldiers—both regulars and reservists—were the defects of the population as a whole. The peasants were imperfectly developed intellectually, and they made soldiers who had the same failing. The intellectual backwardness of our soldiers was a great disadvantage to us, because war now requires far more intelligence and initiative, on the part of the individual soldier, than ever before. Our men fought heroically in compact masses, or in fairly close formation, but if deprived of their officers they were more likely to fall back than to advance. In the mass we had immense strength; but few of our soldiers were capable of fighting intelligently as individuals. In this respect the Japanese were much superior to us. Their non-commissioned officers were far better developed, intellectually, than ours, and among such officers, as well as among many of the common soldiers, whom we took as prisoners, we found diaries which showed not only good education but knowledge of what was happening and intelligent comprehension of the military problems to be solved. Many of them could draw maps skilfully, and one common soldier was able to show accurately, by means of a plan sketched in the sand, the relative positions of the Japanese forces and ours.
But the qualities that contributed most to the triumph of the Japanese were their high moral spirit, and the stubborn determination with which the struggle for success was carried on by every man in their army, from the common soldier to the commander-in-chief. In many cases, their situation was so distressing that it required extraordinary power of will on their part to stand fast or to advance. But the officers seemed to have resolution enough to call on their men for impossible efforts—not even hesitating to shoot those that fell back—and the soldiers, rallying their last physical and spiritual strength, often wrested the victory away from us. One thing is certain: if the whole Japanese army had not been inspired with an ardent patriotism; if it had not been sympathetically supported by the whole nation; and if all its officers and soldiers had not appreciated the immense importance of the struggle, even such resolution as that of the Japanese leaders would have failed to achieve such results.
THE
DEATH OF
HENRY IRVING
BY
ELLEN TERRY
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)
I have now nearly finished the history of my fifty years upon the stage.
A good deal has been left out through want of skill in selection. Some things have been included which perhaps it would have been wiser to omit. I have tried my best to tell "all things faithfully," and it is possible that I have given offence where offence was not dreamed of; that some people will think that I should not have said this, while others, approving of "this," will be quite certain that I ought not to have said "that."
"One said it thundered ... another that an angel spake——"
It's the point of view.
During my struggles with my refractory, fragmentary, and unsatisfactory memories, I have realised that life itself is a point of view. So if any one said to me: "And is this, then, what you call your life?" I should not resent the question one little bit.
"We have heard," continues my imaginary and disappointed interlocutor, "a great deal about your life in the theatre. You have told us of plays and parts and rehearsals, of actors good and bad, of critics and of playwrights, of success and failure, but after all your whole life has not been lived in the theatre. Have you nothing to tell us about your different homes, your family life, your social diversions, your friends and acquaintances? During your long life there have been great changes in manners and customs; political parties have altered; a great Queen has died; your country has been engaged in two or three serious wars. Did all these things make no impression on you? Can you tell us nothing of your life in the world?"
And I have to answer that I have lived very little in the world. After all, the life of an actress belongs to the theatre, as the life of a politician to the State.
The recognition of my fifty years of stage life by the public and by my profession was quite unexpected. Henry Irving said to me not long before his death in 1905 that he believed that they (the theatrical profession) "intended to celebrate our Jubilee." (If he had lived, he would have completed his fifty years on the stage in the autumn of 1906.) He said that there would be a monster performance at Drury Lane, and that already the profession were discussing what form it was to take.
After his death, I thought no more of the matter. Indeed, I did not want to think about it, for any recognition of my Jubilee which did not include his seemed to me very unnecessary.
SIR HENRY IRVING
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN THE POSSESSION OF MISS EVELYN SMALLEY
From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley
"OLIVIA"
DRAWN BY SIR EDWIN HENRY FOR MISS HENRY'S JUBILEE PROGRAMME
Of course, I was pleased that others thought it necessary. I enjoyed all the celebrations. Even the speeches that I had to make did not spoil my enjoyment. The difficulty was to thank people as they deserved.
I can never forget that London's youngest newspaper first conceived the idea of celebrating my stage Jubilee. Of course, the old-established journals didn't like it, but I suppose no scheme of this kind is ever organized without some people not liking something!
The matinée given in my honour at Drury Lane by the theatrical profession was a wonderful sight. The two things about it which touched me most deeply were my visit the night before to the crowd who were waiting to get into the gallery, and the presence of Eleonora Duse, who came all the way from Florence just to honour me. I appreciated very much, too, the kindness of Signor Caruso in singing for me. I did not know him at all, and the gift of his service was essentially the impersonal desire of an artist to honour another artist.
When the details of my Jubilee performance at Drury Lane were being arranged, the committee decided to ask certain distinguished artists to contribute to the programme. They were all delighted about it, and such busy men as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Mr. Abbey, Mr. Byam Shaw, Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Bernard Partridge, Mr. James Pryde, Mr. Orpen, and Mr. William Nicholson all gave some of their work to me. Mr. Sargent was asked if he would allow the first Lady Macbeth sketch to be reproduced. He found that it would not reproduce well, so in the height of the season and of his work with fashionable sitters, he did an entirely new sketch, in black and white, of the same subject! This act of kind friendship I could never forget, even if the picture were not in front of me at this minute to remind me of it! "You must think of me as one of the people bowing down to you in the picture," he wrote to me when he sent the new version for the programme. Nothing during my Jubilee celebrations touched me more than this wonderful kindness of Mr. Sargent's.
Burne-Jones would have done something for my Jubilee programme too, I think, had he lived. He was one of my kindest friends, and his letters—he was a heaven-born letter-writer—were like no one else's, full of charm and humour and feeling. Once, when I sent him a trifle for some charity, he wrote me this particularly charming letter:
"Dear Lady,
"This morning came the delightful crinkly paper that always means you! If anybody else ever used it, I think I should assault them! I certainly wouldn't read their letter or answer it.
"And I know the cheque will be very useful. If I thought much about those wretched homes, or saw them often, I should do no more work, I know. There is but one thing to do—to help with a little money if you can manage it, and then try hard to forget. Yes, I am certain that I should never paint again if I saw much of those hopeless lives that have no remedy....
From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley Copyright by Window & Grove
ELLEN TERRY AS HERMIONE IN "THE WINTER'S TALE"
THE PART PLAYED BY MISS TERRY AT HIS MAJESTY'S THEATRE IN 1906
"You would always have been lovely and made some beauty about you if you had been born there—but I should have got drunk and beaten my family and been altogether horrible! When everything goes just as I like, and painting prospers a bit, and the air is warm, and friends well, and everything perfectly comfortable, I can just manage to behave decently, and a spoilt fool I am—that's the truth. But wherever you were, some garden would grow.
"Yes, I know Winchelsea and Rye and Lynn and Hythe—all bonny places, and Hythe has a church it may be proud of. Under the sea is another Winchelsea, a poor drowned city—about a mile out at sea, I think, always marked in old maps as 'Winchelsea Dround.' If ever the sea goes back on that changing coast, there may be great fun when the spires and towers come up again. It's a pretty land to drive in.
"I am growing downright stupid—I can't work at all, nor think of anything. Will my wits ever come back to me?
"And when are you coming back—when will the Lyceum be in its rightful hands again? I refuse to go there till you come back...."
150 GRAFTON STREET
THE HOUSE WHERE HENRY IRVING LIVED DURING THE PERIOD OF HIS LYCEUM MANAGEMENT
One of those little things almost too good to be true happened at the close of the Drury Lane matinée. A four-wheeler was hailed for me by the stage-door keeper, and my daughter and I drove off to Lady Bancroft's in Berkeley Square to leave some flowers. Outside the house, the cabman told my daughter that in old days he had often driven Charles Kean from the Princess Theatre, and that sometimes the little Miss Terrys were put inside the cab too and given a lift! My daughter thought it such an extraordinary coincidence that the old man should have come to the stage door of Drury Lane by a mere chance on my Jubilee day, that she took his address, and I was to send him a photograph and remuneration. But I promptly lost the address, and was never able to trace the old man.
I was often asked during these Jubilee days, "how I felt about it all," and I never could answer sensibly. The strange thing is that I don't know even now what was in my heart. Perhaps it was one of my chief joys that I had not to say good-bye at any of the celebrations. I could still speak to my profession as a fellow-comrade on the active list and to the public as one still in their service.
All the time I knew perfectly well that the great show of honour and "friending" was not for me alone. Never for one instant did I forget this, nor that the light of the great man by whose side I had worked for a quarter of a century was still shining on me from his grave.
It is commonly known, I think, that Henry Irving's health first began to fail in 1896.
He went home to Grafton Street after the first night of the revival of "Richard III." and slipped on the stairs, injuring his knee. With characteristic fortitude, he struggled to his feet unassisted and walked to his room. This made the consequences of the accident far more serious, and he was not able to act for weeks.
It was a bad year at the Lyceum.
In 1898, when we were on tour, he caught a chill. Inflammation of the lungs, bronchitis, pneumonia followed. His heart was affected. He was never really well again.
When I think of his work during the next seven years, I could weep! Never was there a more admirable, extraordinary worker; never was any one more splendid-couraged and patient.
The seriousness of his illness in 1898 was never really known. He nearly died.
"I am still fearfully anxious about H," I wrote to my daughter at the time. "It will be a long time at the best before he gains strength.... But now I do hope for the best. I'm fairly well so far. All he wants is for me to keep my health, not my head. He knows I'm doing that! Last night I did three acts of Sans-Gêne and Nance Oldfield thrown in! That is a bit too much—awful work—and I can't risk it again.
"A telegram just came: 'Steadily improving.'... You should have seen Norman[I] as Shylock! It was not a bare 'get-through.' It was—the first night—an admirable performance, as well as a plucky one.... H. is more seriously ill than anyone dreams.... His look! Like the last act of Louis XI."
HENRY IRVING AS BECKET
THE PART IN WHICH IRVING MADE HIS LAST APPEARANCE ON OCTOBER 13, 1905, THE NIGHT OF HIS DEATH
In 1902, on the last provincial tour that we ever went together, he was ill again, but he did not give in. One night when his cough was rending him, and he could hardly stand up for weakness, he acted so brilliantly and strongly that it was easy to believe in Christian Science "treatment." Strange to say, a newspaper man noticed the splendid power of his performance that night and wrote of it with uncommon discernment—a provincial critic, by the way.
In London, at the time, they were always urging Henry Irving to produce new plays by new playwrights! But in the face of the failure of most of the new work, and of his departing strength—and of the extraordinary support given him in the old plays (during this 1902 tour we took £4,000 at Glasgow in one week!)—Henry took the wiser course in doing nothing but the old plays to the end of the chapter.
I realised how near, not only the end of the chapter, but the end of the book was when he was taken ill at Wolverhampton in the spring of 1905.
We had not acted together for more than two years then, and times were changed indeed.
I went down to Wolverhampton when the news of his illness reached London. I arrived late and went to an hotel. It was not a good hotel, nor could I find a very good florist when I got up early the next day and went out with the intention of buying Henry some flowers. I wanted some bright-coloured ones for him—he had always liked bright flowers—and this florist dealt chiefly in white flowers—funeral flowers.
At last I found some daffodils—my favourite flower. I bought a bunch, and the kind florist, whose heart was in the right place if his flowers were not, found me a nice simple glass to put it in. I knew the sort of vase that I should find at Henry's hotel.
I remembered, on my way to the doctor's—for I had decided to see the doctor first—that in 1892, when my dear mother died, and I did not act for a few nights, when I came back, I found my room at the Lyceum filled with daffodils. "To make it look like sunshine," Henry said.
The doctor talked to me quite frankly.
"His heart is dangerously weak," he said.
"Have you told him?" I asked.
"I had to, because, the heart being in that condition, he must be careful."
"Did he understand really?"
"Oh, yes. He said he quite understood."
(Yet, a few minutes later when I saw Henry, and begged him to remember what the doctor had said about his heart, he exclaimed: "Fiddle! It's not my heart at all! It's my breath!" Oh, the ignorance of great men!)
"I also told him," the Wolverhampton doctor went on, "that he must not work so hard in future."
I said; "He will, though,—and he's stronger than any one."
Then I went round to the hotel.
I found him sitting up in bed, drinking his coffee.
He looked like some beautiful gray tree that I have seen in Savannah. His old dressing-gown hung about his frail yet majestic figure like some mysterious gray drapery.
We were both very much moved and said little.
"I'm glad you've come. Two Queens have been kind to me this morning. Queen Alexandra telegraphed to say how sorry she was I was ill, and now you——"
He showed me the Queen's gracious message.
I told him he looked thin and ill, but rested.
"Rested! I should think so. I have plenty of time to rest. They tell me I shall be here eight weeks. Of course I shan't, but still—It was that rug in front of the door. I tripped over it. A commercial traveller picked me up—a kind fellow, but damn him, he wouldn't leave me afterwards—wanted to talk to me all night."
I remembered his having said this, when I was told by his servant, Walter Collinson, that on the night of his death at Bradford he stumbled over the rug when he walked into the hotel corridor.
We fell to talking about work. He said he hoped that I had a good manager ... agreed very heartily with me about Frohman, saying he was always so fair—more than fair.
"What a wonderful life you've had, haven't you?" I exclaimed, thinking of it all in a flash.
"Oh, yes," he said quietly, ... "a wonderful life—of work."
Copyright by the London Stereoscopic Co.
HENRY IRVING AS MATTHIAS IN "THE BELLS"
IRVING GAVE HIS LAST PERFORMANCE OF "THE BELLS" AT BRADFORD, ON OCTOBER 12, 1905, THE NIGHT BEFORE HIS DEATH
Copyright by the Topical Press Agency
IRVING'S DEATH MASK
"And there's nothing better, after all, is there?"
"Nothing."
"What have you got out of it all?... You and I are 'getting on,' as they say. Do you ever think, as I do sometimes, what you have got out of life?"
"What have I got out of it?" said Henry, stroking his chin and smiling slightly. "Let me see.... Well, a good cigar, a good glass of wine—good friends—" Here he kissed my hand with courtesy. Always he was so courteous—always his actions, like this little one of kissing my hand, were so beautifully timed. They came just before the spoken words, and gave them peculiar value.
"That's not a bad summing up of it all," I said. "And the end.... How would you like that to come?"
"How would I like that to come?" He repeated my question, lightly, yet meditatively too. Then he was silent for some thirty seconds before he snapped his fingers—the action again before the words.
"Like that!"
I thought of the definition of inspiration—"A calculation quickly made." Perhaps he had never thought of the manner of his death before. Now he had an inspiration as to how it would come.
We were silent a long time, I thinking how like some splendid Doge of Venice he looked, sitting up in bed, his beautiful mobile hand stroking his chin.
I agreed, when I could speak, that to be snuffed out like a candle would save a lot of trouble.
After Henry Irving's death in October of the same year, some of his friends protested against the statement that it was the kind of death he desired—that they knew, on the contrary, that he thought sudden death inexpressibly sad.
I can only say what he told me.
I stayed with him about three hours at Wolverhampton. Before I left, I went back to see the doctor again—a very nice man, by the way, and clever. He told me that Henry ought never to play "The Bells" again, even if he acted again, which he said ought not to be.
It was clever of the doctor to see what a terrible emotional strain "The Bells" put upon Henry—how he never could play the part of Matthias "on his head," as he could Louis XI., for example.
Every time he heard the sound of the bells, the throbbing of his heart must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite white—there was no trick about it. It was imagination acting physically on the body.
From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley
IRVING'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
His death as Matthias—the death of a strong, robust man—was different from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die—he imagined death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upwards, his face grow gray, his limbs cold.
No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor's warning was disregarded, and Henry played "The Bells" at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his last death as Matthias, he was dead.
What a heroic thing was that last performance of Becket which came between! I am told by those who were in the company at the time that he was obviously suffering and dazed this last night of life. But he went through it all as usual. All that he had done for years, he did faithfully for the last time.
Yes, I know it seems sad to the ordinary mind that he should have died in the entrance to an hotel in a country town, with no friend, no relation near him; only his faithful and devoted servant, Walter Collinson, whom—as was not his usual custom—he had asked to drive back to the hotel with him that night, was there. Do I not feel the tragedy of the beautiful body, for so many years the house of a thousand souls, being laid out in death by hands faithful and devoted enough, but not the hands of his kindred either in blood or in sympathy?...
I do feel it, yet I know it was more appropriate to such a man than the deathbed where friends and relations weep. Henry Irving belonged to England, not to a family. England showed that she knew it when she buried him in Westminster Abbey.
Years before I had discussed, half in joke, the possibility of this honour. I remember his saying to me with great simplicity, when I asked him what he expected of the public after his death: "I should like them to do their duty by me. And they will—they will!"
There was not a touch of arrogance in this, just as I hope there was no touch of heartlessness in me because my chief thought during the funeral in Westminster Abbey was: "How Henry would have liked it!" The right note was struck, as I think was not the case at Tennyson's funeral thirteen years earlier.
"Tennyson is buried to-day in Westminster Abbey," I wrote in my diary October 12th, 1892. "His majestic life and death spoke of him better than the service.... The music was poor and dull and weak while he was strong. The triumphant should have been the sentiment expressed. Faces one knew everywhere. Lord Salisbury looked fine. His massive head and sad eyes were remarkable. No face there, however, looked anything by the side of Henry's.... He looked very pale and slim and wonderful!"
How terribly I missed that face at Henry's own funeral! I kept on expecting to see it, for indeed it seemed to me that he was directing the whole most moving and impressive ceremony.... I could almost hear him saying "Get on! get on!" in the parts of the service that dragged. When the sun, such a splendid tawny sun, burst across the solemn misty gray of the Abbey, at the very moment when the coffin, under its superb pall of laurel leaves, was carried up to the choir, I felt that it was an effect which he would have loved.
I can understand any one who was present at Henry Irving's funeral thinking that this was his best memorial, and that any attempt to honour him afterwards would be superfluous and inadequate. But after all it was Henry Irving's commanding genius and his devotion of it to high objects, his personal influence on the English people, which secured him burial among England's great dead. The petition for the burial, presented to the Dean of the Chapter, and signed on the initiative of Henry Irving's leading fellow-actors by representative personages of influence, succeeded only because of Henry's unique position.
"We worked very hard to get it done," I heard said more than once. And I often longed to answer: "Yes, you worked for it between Henry's death and his funeral. He worked for it all his life!"
I have always desired some other memorial to Henry Irving than his honoured grave; not so much for his sake as for the sake of those who loved him, and would gladly welcome the opportunity of some great test of their devotion.
THE END
THE VALLEY OF MILLS
BY
H. G. DWIGHT
WITH A PAINTING BY F. BRANGWYN
The American Dragoman narrates to the Second Secretary
I shall never forget the night I got there. The train went no farther than Nicomedia in those days, and it took so long that you nearly died of old age on the way. But when the three red lights on the tail of it dwindled into the dark, I had the queerest sense of having been dropped into another world. It was the more so because one couldn't see an earthly thing—not a star, not even the Gulf which we were to cross. I only heard the lapping of it, close by, when the rumble of the train died out of the stillness. That and the crunch of steps on the sand were all there was to hear, and an occasional word I didn't catch. The men could hardly have been more silent if our lives had depended on it. I had no idea how many of them there were, or what they looked like—much less where they were taking me. They simply hoisted a sail and put off into the night. I would have sworn, too, that there was no wind. The sail filled, however: I could see the swaying pallor of it, and hear the ripple under the bow. And as my eyes got used to the darkness, I discovered an irregular silhouette in front of us, and a floating will-o'-the-wisp of a light. The silhouette grew taller and blacker till the boat grounded under it. Then, by the light of the will-o'-the-wisp, which was a sputtering oil lantern on shore, I made out some immense cypresses. You have no idea how eerie that landing was, in a waterside cemetery that was for all the world like Böcklin's Island of Death. The men moved like shadows about their Flying Dutchman of a boat, and their lantern just brought out the ghostliness of gravestones leaning between the columns of the cypresses. And I suddenly became aware of the strangest sound. I had no idea what it was or where it came from, but it was a sort of low moaning that fairly went into your bones. It grew louder when we started on again. We climbed an invisible trail where branches slashed at us in the dark, and all kinds of sharp and sweet and queer smells came put of it in waves. And nightingales began to sing like mad around us, and off in the distance somewhere jackals were barking, and under it all that low moaning went on and on and on. And at last we came out into an open space on top of the hill, where a bonfire made a hole in the black, and a couple of naked figures stood redly out in the penumbra of it, with a ring of faces flickering around them....
I found out afterwards that the bonfire business was nothing but a wrestling match—they had them almost every night on the meidan—and the moaning came from the mill-wheels in the valley. But I never quite got over that first impression—that sense of walking through all kinds of things without seeing them. No sooner would I begin to feel a bit at home than something would bring me up with a jerk and remind me that I was a stranger in a strange land. I suppose it was natural enough, considering that I had only just come out then. The place was nothing but a snarl of muddy lanes and mud shanties, tossed into a filbert valley where water tumbled down to the Gulf. It was only about fifty miles away from here, but it might have been five thousand and fifty. There was none of the contrast with Europe that is always bothering you here—though perhaps it really sets things off. The people were all Turks, and their village was Asia pure and simple. That extraordinary juxtaposition of care and neglect, of the exquisite and the nauseating, which begins to strike you in Italy, and which strikes you so much more here, simply went to the top notch there. It was under your eyes—and nose—every minute. There were rugs and tiles and brasses that you couldn't keep your hands off of, in houses plastered with cow-dung. And the people used the gutters for drains, and their principal business was making attar of rose. You should have seen what gardens there were, hidden away behind mud-walls!
What struck me most, though, was a something in it all which I never could lay my finger on. It seemed incredible that a country inhabited so long should show so few signs of it. The people might have camped in a clearing over night, and the woods were just waiting to cover up their tracks. But the wildness was not the good blank, unconscious wildness we have at home. There was a melancholy about it. The silence that hung over the place was really a little uncanny. The mills only cried it out, in that monotonous minor of theirs. They were picturesque old wooden things, all green with moss and maidenhair fern, that went grinding and groaning on forever, and making you wonder what on earth it was all about. I can't say that I ever found out, either. But I certainly got grist enough for my own mill.
For that matter, I don't imagine that I was precisely an open book myself. In this part of the world they haven't got our passion for poking around where we don't belong: perhaps they've had more time to find out how little there is in it. And for a mysterious individual from lands beyond the sea, whose servant can't be prevented from bragging of the splendor in which he lives at Constantinople, to bury himself in a wild country village, must mean something queer. Does one give up a konak on the Bosphorus for a khan in the Marmora? And are there no teachers of Turkish in Stamboul? I believe it didn't take long for the Moutessarif of Nicomedia to find out I was there, and for him to ascertain in ways best known to himself what I was up to. I have often wondered what his version of it was. At all events it didn't prevent the great men of the village from smoking cigarettes of peace with me in a little vine-shaded coffee-house at the top of the hill. There was the Mudir, a plump and harmless effendi of a governor; and the Naïb, who was some kind of country justice; and a charming old Imam in a green turban and a white beard and a rose-colored robe; and a Tchaouche, an officer of police, all done up in yellow braid and brass whistles; and various other personages. And I couldn't imagine where in the world they had all picked up their courtliness and conversation. The Mudir was from town, and one or two of the others had been there; but if such things were to be had for a visit to town they'd be a little more common at home. Of course, I was asked a good many questions, and some of them were pretty personal. That is a part of Oriental etiquette, you will find. It was marvelous, though, what a savoir faire they had, to say nothing of a sense of life and a few other things. I couldn't make them out—taken with their vile village and their half-tamed fields. The thing used to bother me half to death, too. I thought all I had to do was to sit down and look pleasant and turn them inside out at my leisure. Whereas more than once I had a vague feeling, after it was over, of having been turned inside out myself. Altogether it makes me grin when I remember what an idiotic young ostrich I was. I have been at the business quite a while now, and to this day I am never sure of my man—how that Asiatic head of his will work in any given case. I can only console myself by remembering that I'm not the only one. In the last two generations I presume there must have been as many as four Anglo-Saxons—and three of those, Englishmen—who didn't more or less make jackasses of themselves when they ran up against Asia. And I fancy it took them rather more than a year to arrive at even that negative degree of comprehension.
However, various things went into my hopper first and last, to the tune of the mill-wheels in the valley—particularly last.... It was lucky for me that the wireless telegraphy I sometimes felt about me allowed the Mudir to cultivate his natural inclinations. He was bored enough in his exile, and I think he was genuinely glad that his advices from headquarters made him free of my company. I certainly am. I have never come into just such relations with any of the officials here. He was a grave, mild, suave personage who might have made an excellent Cadi of tradition if he had never heard of Paris. As it was, I'm afraid he took less thought for his peasants' troubles than of the extent to which they could be made to repay him for his own. He liked to practise his French on me as much as I liked to practise my Turkish on him, and on such occasions as I had the honor of squatting at his little round board, his knowledge of the Occident would manifest itself in an incredible profusion of spoons. I also discovered that he was by no means averse to sampling my modest cellar. He didn't care so much about being found out, though. They are tremendous prohibitionists, you know, and while the pashas have accepted champagne with their tight trousers, they're not so public about it. Just watch when you go to your first court dinner.
A person of whom I thought more than the Mudir, and who interested me more as a type, was the Imam. A more kindly, honest, simple, delightful old man it has seldom been my luck to meet. He was a Turk of the old school, without an atom of Europe in his composition. I wish they were not getting so confoundedly rare. They are worth a million times more than these Johnnies who pick up the Roman alphabet and a few half-baked ideas about what we are pleased to call progress. I took daily lessons from him. He was a mighty theologian—made me read the Koran, and all that, and was much interested in what I had to tell him of our own beliefs. He used to make me ashamed of knowing so little about them. Before he got through with me, he taught me rather more than was in the bond, I fancy. I had always cherished a notion that because a Turk could have four wives, and didn't think much of my chances for the world to come, and was somewhat free in the use of antidotes to human life, his morality wasn't worth talking about. But I got something of an eye-opener on that point.
Altogether, I managed to have a very decent time of it. My pill of learning the most of the language in the least possible time was so ingeniously sugared that the business was one prolonged picnic. In fact, living in a khan, as I did at first, is nothing but camping. They're all about the same, you know. You can see the model any day over in Stamboul—a rambling stack of galleries round a court of cattle and wheels, and big bare rooms where twenty people could live. They often do, too. You spread your own bedding on the wooden divan surrounding two or three sides of the room, and your servant cooks for you in a series of little charcoal pits under the huge chimney. It's rather amusing for a while, if you're not too fussy about smells and crawling things. I suppose I must have been, for the Mudir eventually persuaded me to rent a house from an absentee rose-growing pasha. It was about the only wooden one in the place—a huge rattlety-bang old affair that stood on the edge of the bluff, a little apart from the town. It leaked so villainously that I had to sit under an umbrella every time there was a shower, but the view and the garden made up for it. I used to prowl around the country a good deal, though. Everything was so strange to me—the faces, the costumes, the curious implements, the hairy black buffaloes, the fat-tailed sheep with their dabs of red dye, the solid-wheeled carts that lamented more loudly, if less continuously, than the water-wheels, the piratish-looking caravels strutting up and down the Gulf under a balloon of a mainsail. I took them by the day, sometimes, to go fishing or exploring. All of which must have been highly incomprehensible to my astonished neighbors. I believe my man had to invent some legend of a doctor and a cure to account for so eccentric a master. It was only when I came more and more to spend my days among the cypresses on the edge of the beach that I became less an object of suspicion; for while a Turk is little of a sportsman and less of mere aimless sight-seer, he likes nothing better than sitting philosophically under the greenwood tree.
My greenwood was, as I have said, a cemetery. Heaven knows how long it had been there. The cypresses were enormously tall and thick and dark. And the stones under them—with their carved turbans and arabesques, and their holes and rain-hollows for restless or thirsty ghosts—were all gray and lichened with time, and pitched every which way between the coiling roots. You may think it a queer kind of place to sit around in, but it took my fancy enormously. I don't know—there was something so still and old about it, and the spring had such a look between the black trees. It wasn't quite still, either, for that strange, low minor of the water-wheels was always in your ears. It ran on and on, like the sound of the quiet and the sunshine and the cypresses and the ancient stones. And it made all sorts of things go through your head. I presume that first impression had something to do with it. You wondered whether the trees would have lived so long if so many dead people had not lain among their roots. You wondered—I don't know what you didn't wonder.
As hot weather came on, I used to pack a hammock and reading and writing and cooking things on a donkey nearly every day, and drop down through the filberts to my cypresses. There was fairly decent bathing there, over an outrageous bottom of stones and sea-urchins. What I liked best, though, was simply to lie around and watch the world go by. Not that much of it does go by the Gulf of Nicomedia. If it hadn't been for a sail every now and then, you would have supposed that people had forgotten all about that little blue pocket of a firth leading nowhere between its antique hills. Then there were two or three trains a day, whose black you could just make out, crawling through the green of the opposite shore. And there was a steamer a day each way that it was as much as your life was worth to put your foot into. You wouldn't think so, though, to see the people who packed the decks. Sometimes I used to go down to the landing for the pleasure of the contrast they made, solemnly huddled up in their picturesque rags, with the noisy modern steamer. It was a miracle where so many of them came from and went to. That's the wildest part of the Marmora, you know, for all their railroad on the north shore. Some day, I suppose, when German expresses go thundering through to the Persian Gulf, it'll be all factory chimneys and summer hotels, like the rest of the world. But now there's nothing worse than vineyards and tobacco plantations. On the south coast there's hardly that. The hills stand up pretty straight out of the water, and they're wooded down to the rocks. You might think it virgin forest if you didn't know the Nicene Creed came out of it—to say nothing of invisible villages, and eyes looking out at you without your knowing. It all gave one such an idea of the extraordinary wreckage that has been left on the shores of that old Greek Sea. Only you don't get it as you do here, where races and creeds march past you on the Bridge while you stand by and admire. There's something more secret and ancient about it—more like Homer and the Bible and the Arabian Nights.
The caravans gave the most telling touch. You don't often see camels up here any longer, but they're still common enough in the interior. I could hardly believe my eyes the first time a procession of them appeared on my beach. First came a man on horseback, with a couple of Persian saddle-bags to make your mouth water, and then the long string of camels roped together like barges in a tow. What an air they had—the fantastic tawny line of them swinging against the blue of the Gulf! And how softly they padded along the shingle, with the picturesque ruffians in charge of them throned high among their mysterious bales! They passed without so much as a turn of the eye, my Wise Men of the East, and disappeared behind the point as silently as they came. It gave me the strangest sensation. I had felt something of the same before. I could scarcely help it, looking out between those tragic trees at the white strip of beach and the blue strip of sea and the green strip of hills that were so much like other hills and seas and beaches and yet so different. But there had never come to me before quite such a sense of the strangeness of this world where so many things had been buried from the time of Jason and the Argo—of this world of which I knew nothing and to which I was nothing.
You may believe that I was delighted when I went back to the village that night and found it full of camels. The air was sizzling with bonfires and kebabs—you know those bits of lamb they broil on a long wooden spit?—and strange faces were at every corner. They filled the coffee-house, too, when I finally got there. By that time it was too dark to stare as hard as I would have liked. But perhaps the scene was all the more picturesque for the shadowy figures scattered under the vine in the dusk, and the bubble of nargilehs filling the intervals of talk. A feature would come saliently out here and there in the red of a cigarette—a shining eye, a hawk nose, a bronzed cheek-bone. And out on the meidan were groups around fires, with their little pipes that have all the trouble of the East in them, and their little tomtoms of such inimitable rhythms.
I found my friends established as usual in the seat of honor—an old sofa in the corner of the café—and as usual they made place for me amongst them. When the ceremony of their welcome subsided, the Mudir took occasion to whisper to me that the leader of the caravan, an excellent fellow who had stopped there before, was telling stories. I then recognized, in the light of the cafedij's lamp, the man I had seen that afternoon on horseback. He sat on a stool in front of the divan of honor, and behind him were crowded all the other stools and mats in the place. Although he had not deigned, before, to turn his head toward me, he now testified by the depth of his salaam to the honor he felt in such an addition to his circle. He was a curiously handsome chap, burnt and bearded, with the high-hung jaw of his people, the arched brow, the almost Roman nose. And, shaky as I still was in the language, he didn't leave me long to wonder why he was the center of the circle. He was a born raconteur—one of those story-tellers who in the East still carry on the tradition of the troubadours. Not that he sang to us, or recited poetry—although the Imam told me with pride that the man was a dictionary of the Persian poets. But he went on with a story he had begun before my entrance. It was one of those endless old eastern tales that are such a charming mixture of serpent wisdom and childish naïveté. And he told it with a vividness of gesture and inflection that you never get from print.
Well, you can imagine! I always had a fancy for that sort of thing, but it's so deuced hard to get at—at least, for people like us. And after that queer turn the first sight of the caravan gave me, down by the water, it made me feel as if I were really beginning to lay my hand on things at last. So I was disappointed enough when at the end of the story the party began to break up. Upon my signifying as much to my neighbor, the Mudir, however, he said that nothing would be easier than to summon the man to a private session. If I would do him the honor to come to the konak—I was tickled enough to take up with the idea, provided the meeting should take place at my house instead. I knew there would be bakshish, which I didn't like to put the Mudir in for, after all he had done. Moreover, I had a whim to get the camel-driver under my own roof—by way of nailing the East, so to speak!
So the upshot of the business was that we made a night of it. Oh, I don't mean any of your wild and woolly ones. To be sure, we did wet things down a trifle more than is the custom of the country. There happened to be a decanter on the table, which the camel-driver looked at as if he wouldn't mind knowing what it contained; and being a bit awkward at first, I knew no better than to trot it out. The Mudir, to whom of course I offered it first, wouldn't have any. I suppose he had his reputation to keep up before an inferior. I was rather surprised, all the same, for it was plain enough that the camel-driver was by no means the kind of man the name implies, and a little Greek wine wouldn't hurt a baby. Moreover, I had heard of this raki of theirs, which is so much fire-water, and I didn't take their temperance very seriously. As for the camel-driver, he was rather amusing.
"You tempt me to my death!" he laughed, taking the glass I poured out for him. "Do you know that my men would kill me if they saw me now? These country people have not the ideas of the effendi and myself. They follow blindly the Prophet, not realizing how many rooms there are in the house of a wise man. They found out that I had been affording opportunity for the forgiveness of God, and they took it quite seriously. They threatened to kill me if I did not make a public confession. And I had to do it, to please them. On the next Friday I made a solemn confession of my sins in mosque, and swore never to smell another drop."
At this I didn't know just what to do. I looked at the Mudir, and the Mudir looked at the camel-driver. The latter, however, waved his hand with a smile of goodfellowship.
"There is no harm now," he said. "We break caravan to-morrow at Nicomedia. Moreover, I do not drink saying it is right. I should blaspheme God, who has commanded me not to drink. But I acknowledge that I sin. Great be the name of God!" With which he tipped the glass into his mouth. "My soul!" he exclaimed, "That is better than a cucumber in August!"
These people are democratic, you know, to a degree of which we haven't an idea—for all our declaration of independence. Yet there are certain invisible lines which are sure to trip a foreigner up and which made me mighty uncertain what to do with the governor of a mudirlik and the leader of a caravan. But the latter proceeded to look out for that. Such a jolly good fellow you never saw in your life, with his stories, and the way he had with him, and the things he had been up to. It turned out that he knew western Asia a good deal better than I know western Europe. Tabriz, Tashkend, Samarkand, Cabul, to say nothing of Mecca and Cairo and Tripoli—such names dropped from him as Liverpool and Marseilles might from me. Where camel goes he had been, and for him Asia Minor was no more than a sort of ironic tongue stuck out at Europe by the huge continent behind. It gave me my first inkling of how this empire is tied up. It seems to hang so loosely together, without the rails and wires that put Sitka and St. Augustine in easier reach of each other than Constantinople and Bagdad. I began to learn then that wires and rails are not everything—that there are stronger nets than those. Altogether it was a momentous occasion. To sit there in that queer old house, in a wild hill village of the Marmora, and speak familiarly with that camel-driver who carried the secrets of Asia in his pocket—it brought me nearer than I had ever dreamed to that life which was always so tantalizing me by my inability to get at it.
When the man finally withdrew, and the Mudir after him, I was in no mood to go to bed. They had opened to me their ancient world, with all its poetry and mystery, and I did not want to lose it again. I could see it stretching dimly beyond the windows where the water-wheels went moaning under the moon. I went out into it. The night was—you have no idea what those nights could be. They had such a way of swallowing up the squalidness of things, and bringing out all their melancholy magic. The rose season was at its height, and the air was one perfume from the hidden gardens. Then the nightingales were at that heart-breaking music of theirs. And the moon! It wasn't one of those glaring round things, like a coachman's button or a butcher's boy with the mumps, by which young ladies are commonly put into spasms; but it was an old wasted one, with such a light!
It was all the more extraordinary because not a creature was about—except a man who lay asleep on the ground, not far from the door. Apparently they dropped off wherever they happened to be, down there, and I used to envy them for it. I stood still for a while, in the shadow of the house, taking it all in. Don't you know, it happens once in a while that you have a mood, and that your surroundings come up to it? It doesn't happen very often, either—at least, to workaday people like us. So I stood there, looking and listening and breathing. And when I saw the edge of the shadow of the house crumble up at one place, without any visible cause, and creep out into the moonlight, I—I only looked at it. Nothing had any visible cause in that strange world of mine, and I watched the slowly lengthening finger of shadow with the passivity of a man who has seen too many wonders to wonder any more. But then I made out a darker darkness winding back toward the house. And—I don't know—I thought of the man on the ground. I looked at him.
It was my camel-driver, dead as Darius, with the blood running out of a hole in his back like water out of a spout. For the moment I was still too far away from every day to be startled, or even very much surprised. It was only a part of that mysterious world, with its mysterious people and mysterious ways that I never could understand. What was he doing there dead, who had been so full of life a little while before? Was it one of his jokes? The night was the most enchanting you could imagine, the air was heady with the breath of rose-gardens, the nightingales were singing in the trees (down in the valley I heard, low, low, the weary water-wheels), and here was the prince of story-tellers with his tongue stopped forever, and the blood of him making a snaky black trail across the moonlight....
What happened next? My dear fellow, you remind me of these kids who will never let you finish their story! Nothing happened next. That was the beauty of it. I guess I got one pretty good case of the jim-jams after a while, and when I got through wondering whether I was going to be elected next, I began to wonder whether they wouldn't think I'd done it. Of course, I had done it, as a matter of fact, and that didn't tend to composure of mind. Neither did my speculations as to what the Mudir might or might not have noticed when he left me that evening. But, if you will believe it, nobody ever lifted a finger. The next morning the caravan was gone and apparently everything was the same as before. If anything, they were more decent than before. That was the worst of it. I don't believe I'd have minded so much if they'd stoned me and ridden me out on a rail and set the Government after me and raised the devil generally. I should at least have felt less at sea. As it was—hello, there's Carmignani! Let's take him over to Tokatlian's.