In our quiet hut there was no need for the usual Quiet Room; but there it was, at the platform end, as much use as in the heart of the Great Sahara. I had thought of turning it into a little informal sort of lecture-room, for readings and other entertainments which might not be to everybody's taste. But I had no time to organise or run a side-show; neither of us had a spare moment in the beginning. Though we never opened in the morning, except to officers who cared to come in as friends, there was plenty to do behind the scenes—parcels of new books to unpack and acknowledge, supplementary catalogues to prepare—all manner of preparations and improvements that took the two of us all our time. Then my second mate, the minister, fell from Heaven—for he was just our man.
He had made a hobby of the literary evening in his Border parish; had come out armed with a number of vivacious appreciations of his favourite authors, the very thing for our Quiet Room. I handed it over to him forthwith, and we embarked together upon a series of Quiet Room Evenings, which I do believe were a joy to all concerned. At any rate we always had an audience of forty or fifty enthusiasts, who took part in the closing discussion, and in time might have been encouraged to put up a better lecture than either of us. The minister, however, was very good; and what he had cut out, in his unselfish pursuit of brevity, I could sometimes put into a more ponderous performance at the end. It was a greater chance than any that one got on Sunday evening; for though I promise them there was never any previous idea of improving the occasion, yet it was impossible to sit, pipe in mouth, chatting about some great writer to that roomful of thinking, fighting men, and not to touch great issues unawares. Life and death—wine and women—I almost shudder to think what subjects were upon us before we knew where we were! But a great, big, heavenly heart beat back at me, the composite heart of fifty noblemen on easy terms with Death; and if they heard anything worth remembering, it came from themselves as much as though they had written the things down and handed them up to me to read out. I have known an audience of young schoolboys as kindlingly responsive to a man who loved them; but here were grown soldiers on the battle's brink; and their high company, and their dear attention, what a pride and privilege were they!
If only it had been earlier in the season, not the very hush before the hurricane! There were so many lives and works that we were going to thresh out together—Francis Thompson's, for one. He had crept into our evening with Edgar Allan Poe. I had promised them a long evening with Francis; the stretcher-bearers, especially, were looking forward to it as much as I was; but I had to send for the books, and they were not in time.
And on the last of these Quiet Room Evenings, a young lad in a Line regiment had stayed behind and said:
'May we have a lecture on Sir John Ruskin, sir?'
I said of course they might—but I was not competent to deliver it myself. His books were on the way, however, for there had been more than one inquiry for them. They also arrived too late.
I had never seen the boy before, nor did I again. I may this winter. He shall have his 'lecture on Sir John Ruskin'—if I have to get it up myself!
WRITERS AND READERS
For my own ends I kept a kind of librarian's ledger, in which was entered, under the author's name, every book that ever went out, together with its successive dates of departure and return. This amateurish scheme may not have been worth the labour it entailed, in spare moments at the counter or last thing at night, after a turn-over of perhaps a hundred volumes, many of which needed new labels before retiring to the shelf. But I was never sorry I had let myself in for it. Theoretically, one had only to look up a book in this ledger to tell whether it was in or out; but in practice my reward was not then, but is now, when I can see at a glance who really were our popular authors, and which books of theirs were never without a partner, and which proved wall-flowers.