“My son Frederick died this morning at eight o'clock of malignant fever. He was conscious at the end, and we read your telegram to him. He sent this message: 'Long ago I knew it was not you, and I ought to have written. Forgive me, as I have forgiven you. My last prayer is for a blessing upon you and your people in the sacrament to-morrow. God be with you till we meet at the marriage supper of the Lamb!'”
The text which Carmichael took for his action sermon on the morrow was, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them who trespass against us,” and he declared the forgiveness of sins with such irresistible grace that Donald Menzies twice said “Amen” aloud, and there are people who will remember that day unto the ages of ages.
IX.—OUR FOREIGN MANNERS
IF a student of life will only take his stand in the hall of one of those Swiss caravansaras which receives a trainful of Britons about six o'clock some evening in August and despatches them on their way by Diligence next morning, he will not lose his time, for he will have an opportunity of studying the foreign manners of his nation. The arrival of an Englishman of the John Bull type is indeed an event, and the place is shaken as by a whirlwind. A loud, clear, strident voice is heard sounding in the English tongue to the extremities of the hall, demanding that its owner be instantly taken to the rooms—“First floor,” I said, “with best view, according to the telegram sent yesterday,” refusing every explanation as to there being none disengaged, insisting that, somehow or other, rooms of that very kind be offered, and then grumbling its way upstairs, with an accompaniment in the minor key from a deprecating landlord, till a distant rumble dying away into the silence closes the incident. The landlord has reluctantly admitted that he has rooms on the second floor, better than any other in the house, which are being kept for a Russian prince, and if Monsieur will accept them for the night—and then Monsieur calls his wife's attention to the fact that when he put his foot down he gets his way. One does not, of course, believe that the landlord said what was absolutely true, and one would have been delighted had he plucked up courage and shown our compatriot to the door. But nothing is easier (and more enjoyable) than to point out how other people ought to conduct their affairs, and no doubt, were we Swiss innkeepers, needing to make a year's profit out of three months, we also would have taken rampant Englishmen by guile, as bulls are lassoed with ropes. Your heart would be adamant if you did not pardon the poor little device when our national voice is again raised in the dining-room ordering away a plate on account of an invisible smut, complaining of the wine because of a bit of cork, comparing the beef with the home roasts, and enlarging on a dozen defects in bedroom service to sympathetic spirits right and left, and, for that matter, as far as the voice can reach. In England that voice will give it to be understood that it could not be heard amid the chatter of noisy foreigners “gabbling away goodness knows what,” but as a matter of fact no combination of German, French, and Italian could resist the penetrating, domineering, unflinching accent. When that host bows the voice into an omnibus next morning with great politeness, then one has an illustration of the spread of the Christian spirit enough to reinforce the heart in the hours of blackest pessimism.
Would a foreigner believe that the owner of this terrible voice is really one of the best? He is the soul of honour, and would cut off his hand rather than do a mean deed; his servants adore him, though he gives them what he calls a round of the guns once a week; and the last thing he did before leaving home was to visit an old gamekeeper who taught him to shoot the year he went to Harrow. When a good man preaches the charity sermon, this unsympathetic Englishman is quite helpless, and invariably doubles the sum set aside in his waistcoat pocket. Upon the bench he is merciless on poachers and tramps; in private he is the chosen prey of all kinds of beggars. In fact, he is in one way just what he specially detests—a sham—being the most overbearing, prejudiced, bigoted, the most modest, simple-minded, kind-hearted of men; and, in spite of that unchastened voice, a gentleman from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Certainly he ordereth over much, but he will take care that every servant has a reward before he leaves—going back from the omnibus to tip “that fellow with the green apron” who did some trifle for him last night—and if the landlord had only had the discernment to have described that accident to him, the driver's widow would have been richer by fifty francs.
The blame of our foreign manners is partly geographical. We happen to be bom in an island, and our amazing ideas about continentals are being very slowly worn away by travel. It is just breaking on the average Briton that, although a foreigner does not splash in his bath of a morning so that neighbouring rooms can follow the details of his toilette, he may not be quite uncleanly; that one need not hide all his valuables beneath his pillow because the other three men in his compartment of the wagon lit do not speak English; that an Italian prince is not always a swindler, but may have as long a pedigree as certain members of the House of Lords; and that the men who constructed the Mont Cenis and St. Gothard tunnels must at least have understood the rudiments of engineering science. The puzzled expression on our countryman's face when he discovers that the foreigner can give us points—in conveyance of luggage, for instance, or the making of coffee, or in the small agriculture—goes to your heart. It seems to him a surprise on the part of Providence, and a violation of the favoured nation's clause.
Perhaps it ought also to be said in our defence that we are afflicted by the infirmities of a ruling people. We are not only profoundly conscious that we are an invincible nation ourselves, but also are saturated with the belief that we have a commission to govern other nations. Our talents are mostly exercised in India and Africa, but if one reigns absolutely anywhere, he carries himself as a king everywhere, and the ordinary Englishman annexes any place he fancies in holiday time because his fathers have been appropriating provinces from time immemorial. One sometimes falls a prey to the Philistine that is in us all, and begins also to despise what our friend pleasantly calls “all this scraping and bowing,” by which he means a Frenchman's politeness in little things, and is tempted to think that it would be better if local government on the Continent were relieved of a burden of petty rules and a host of gorgeous officials, and were reinforced by a strong infusion of downright common sense. One means, in plain words, that if a foreign district were handed over to an English stipendiary magistrate and a score of London policemen, its people would learn for the first time the scope and meaning of good government.
Many well-doing Englishmen cannot unto this day achieve a single grammatical sentence in any language except their own, and are free from all pretensions. Our rector stoutly declares that in his popular lecture, “To Paris and back, or a Glimpse of French Life,” he did not cite the familiarity of Parisian children with French as a proof of the precocity of foreigners, but he can never watch two Frenchmen in conversation without innocent enjoyment. The sounds they make are marvellous, but it is beyond question that they mean something, and it is pleasant to know that persons who cannot speak English are not left without means of communication. Foreigners, an Englishman remembers, labour under hopeless disabilities. Little can be expected from a people whose language permits a sentence—in a scientific book too—to end with “zu, ab,” and one may not be Pharisaic and yet have gloomy views—this illustration can be used in the pulpit—about a nation that has no word for home. One of our French class at school, a stout gentleman now, and worth £100,000, declares he would never demean himself by any attempt at foreign tongues, and demands that foreigners should learn English, “which will yet be the language of the world.” He was recently boasting that he had travelled a month by the aid of signs, although he does himself less than justice, for on sight of the railway station he will say “Bannhof, eh?” to the driver in quite a jocular way, as one by way of pleasing a four-footed pet.