Things call to each other after the great silence has fallen, scenes come together, and that is how it seems here.
A ship, bound on a far voyage, lay in Plymouth waters the day that the Queen succeeded to the throne. It was laden with an expedition for the new wonderland of the Australias, whither it duly sailed. As leader, the expedition had a young lieutenant of the 83rd Foot Regiment, George Grey.
On a spring afternoon, fifty-seven years later, there landed at the same port, from a New Zealand liner, an aged man who received marked attention. He was as a gnarled oak of the wide-ranged British forest, and the younger trees bent in salute to him. It was Sir George Grey, returned finally to the Motherland, which had sent him forth to build nations.
He had gone in a tubby wooden craft, the winds his carrier, across oceans that were pathless, except to the venturer. He returned by steam, through seas which it had tamed to the churn and rumble of the screw. What thought in the contrasting pictures of the world! The two Englands might have met each other in the street, and passed, strangers.
'From the windows of my hotel at Plymouth,' Sir George recalled, 'I watched the citizens proclaim the young Queen. Who among them could have imagined the glorious reign hers was to be? It was to surpass in bounty of achievement all foretelling.'
Now, he would meet, for the last time, the Sovereign who, like himself, had tended the rise of Oceana. This was at Windsor, to which he had summons soon after he reached England. He had been exalted a member of the Privy Council, and must be sworn in by the Queen. The tribute was cheerful to him, since the very nature of it set seal upon his services to the Empire. The longing for some word of England's remembrance had assuredly been in his heart, which had often been left desolate. It was all rapture to England, like a child's to its mother.
'For mere honours themselves,' was his broad attitude thereon, 'I entertain no special regard. A title to one's name, a red ribbon, or something else, what are they but baubles, unless there is more? What more? Why, they hand down a record of the public work that a person may have endeavoured to perform. In that respect they should have esteem, being the recognition of efforts to serve Queen and people.
'Nothing could be more unfortunate than that a country should neglect services rendered to it. The loss is its own, because, apart from justice to the individual, his example is not kept alive to encourage others coming after. In so far, then, as that reasoning may apply to myself—not very far, perhaps—I do sincerely value any honours I have received. Not otherwise; and it is easy to understand that a distinction, granted without adequate cause, might exercise a really pernicious effect upon the tone of a nation.'
While Sir George awaited the Queen's commands at Windsor, she sent him them. He was not to go on his knees, a usual part of the ceremony of swearing in a Privy Councillor. She had remembered, with a woman's feeling, that here was a patriarch, nimble no longer.
The meeting between Queen and servant was stately, in that they were the two people who linked most intimately Great and Greater Britain. To them Oceana was a living, sentient thing, not merely a glorious name and expanse. It had squalled in their ears. They could go back to the beginnings, could witness the whole panorama of the Colonies unroll itself. They stood for the history of a high endeavour, which had been nobly crowned. Oft, there had been weary clouds across the sky, not seldom heavy darkness. But the sun was kept shining, and finally all had become light. Oceana was grown up, and she gathered the four corners of her robe into that Windsor audience chamber.