"Really? But what makes you think that?"
"I fancy he is much more reserved—less frank and more preoccupied; not so jolly, in fact, as he always was. I have thought so for several weeks."
"I am sorry, very sorry; and I do hope you are mistaken. Of course he is overworked—we all are; but that never hurt him before; and with things going so splendidly—— Oh, I hope you are mistaken."
"Perhaps so," I said. "Certainly I think he has every reason to be happy—to be happy and proud; every reason."
And I stopped at that; but Constance made no sign to me; and I wondered she did not, for we were very intimate, and she was sweetly kind to me in those days. Indeed, once when I looked up sharply at her with a question from some work we were engaged upon, I saw a light in her beautiful eyes which thrilled my very heart with strange delight. Her expression had changed instantly, and I told myself I had no sort of business to be thrilled by a look which was obviously born of reverie, of thoughts about John Crondall. Such a sweet light of love her eyes held! I told myself for the hundredth time that no consideration should ever cloud the happiness of the man who was so fortunate as to inspire it—to have won the heart which looked out through those shining eyes.
But it must not be supposed that I had much leisure for this sort of meditation. My feeling for Constance certainly dominated me. Indeed, it accounted for everything of import in my life—for my general attitude of mind and, I make no doubt, for my being where I was and playing the part I did play in The Citizens' campaign. But our life was not one that admitted of emotional preoccupation of any sort. We were too close to the working mechanism of national progress. There never was more absorbing work than the making and enrolment of Citizens at such a juncture in the history of one's country.
The spirit of our work, no less than that of the Canadian preachers' teaching, was actually in the air at that time. It dominated English life, from the mansions of the great landholders to the cottages of the field-labourers and the tenements of the factory-hands. It affected every least detail of the people's lives, and coloured all thought and action in England—a process which I am sure was strengthened by the remarkable growth of Colonial sentiment throughout the country at this time. The tide of emigration seemed to have been reversed by some subtle process of nature: the strong ebb of previous years had become a flow of immigration. Everywhere one met Canadians, Australians, South Africans, and an unusual number of Anglo-Indians.
"We've been doing pretty well of late," said one of the Canadians to me when I commented to him upon this influx into the Old Country of her Colonial sons; "and I reckon we can most of us spare time to see things through a bit at Home. The way our folk look at it on the other side is this: They reckon we've got to worry through this German business somehow and come out the right way up on the other side, and a good deal more solid than we went in. We don't reckon there's going to be any more 'Little Englandism' or Cobdenism after this job's once put through; and that's a proposition we're mighty keenly interested in, you see. We put most of our eggs into the Empire basket, away back, while you people were still busy giving Africa to the Boers, and your Navy to the dogs, and your markets to Germany, and your trade and esteem to any old foreigner that happened along with a nest to feather. I reckon that's why we're most of us here; and maybe that's why we mostly bring our cartridge-belts along. A New South Wales chap told me last night you couldn't get up a cricket match aboard a P. and O. or Orient boat, not for a wager—nothing but shooting competitions and the gentle art of drill. You say 'Shun!' to the next Colonial you meet, and listen for the click of his heels! Not that we set much store by that business ourselves, but we learned about the Old Country taste for it in South Africa, and it's all good practice, anyhow, and good discipline."
But, whatever the motives and causes behind their coming, it is certain that an astonishingly large number of our oversea kinsmen were arriving in England each week; and I believe every one of them joined The Citizens. Their presence and the part they played in affairs had a marked effect upon the spirit of the time. All sorts and conditions of people, whose thoughts in the past had never strayed far from their own parishes, now talked familiarly of people, things, and places Colonial. The idea of our race being one big tribe, though our homes might be hemispheres apart, seemed to me to take root for the first time in the minds of the general public at about this period. I spoke of it to John Crondall, and reminded him how he had urged this idea upon us years before in Westminster with but indifferent success.
"Ah, well," he said, "they have come to it of their own accord now; and that means they'll get a better grip of it than any one could ever have given them. That's part of our national character, and not a bad part."