“There is a grand old white head nodding at the upper end of the Green Council Board at the War Office, or soundly sleeping, in the inner sanctum at the covered passage-end that has always been known as the office of the Commander-in-Chief,—that Britain, in her gratitude and loyal regard and tender reverence for its great owner,—and God forbid that I should rob him of one jot or tittle of what has been so gloriously won!—has left there long years since the brain within it became incapable, by the natural and inevitable decay of its once splendid faculties, of planning and carrying out any wholesome, needful reform in our Army’s organization—even of listening to those who have suggestions to offer, or plans to submit, with anything but an old man’s testy impatience of what seems new. This is deplored by personages nominally subordinate, really wielding absolute power. ‘Sad, sad!’ they say, ‘but the nation would have it so.’ Yet little more than a year ago, when, as by a miracle, the strength and vigor of the old warrior’s prime seemed, if only for an instant, to have returned to him—when the dim fires of the gray eagle-glance blazed out again, and the trembling hand, strung to vigor for the nonce, penned that most electrifying letter,—published a few weeks back by what the New England Party regard as a wise stroke of policy, and Officialdom as an unpardonable indiscretion,—that letter declaring the country’s defenses to be beggarly and inadequate, its naval arsenals neglected, its dockyards undermanned, its forts not half-garrisoned.... What sort of criticism did it evoke? Those who were openly antagonistic declared it to be preposterous; those who were loyal treated its utterances with contemptuous, galling indulgence.... To me it was as though a prophetic voice had spoken in warning from the tomb! And even before the graven stone sinks down over the weary old white head, Ada, and the laurels are withered that lie above, the country he loved and served so grandly may be doing pennance in dust and ashes for that warning it despised!”
“And if the War-call sounded to-morrow,” she said, with her intent look upon him, and her long white fingers knitted about her knee, “and the need arose—as it would arise—for a man of swift decision and vigorous action to lead us in the field—upon whom would we rely? Who would step into the breach, and wield the baton?”
“A man,” returned Bertham, “sixty-six years old, who served on the Duke’s staff and lost his left arm at Waterloo; who has never held any command or had any experience of directing troops in War, and whose life, for forty years or so, has been spent in the discharge of the duties, onerous but not active, devolving upon a Military Secretary. The whole question as to fitness or not fitness turns upon an ‘if.’”
The speaker spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders slightly, and a whimsical spark of humor gleamed in the look he turned upon the listener, as a star might shine through the wild blue twilight of a day of gale and storm, as he resumed:
“If the possession of the Wellingtonian manner,—combined with an empty sleeve—all honor to the brave arm that used to be inside it!—a manner full of urbanity and courtesy—nicely graduated and calculated according to the rank and standing of the person addressed; and admirable command of two Continental languages, and a discreet but distinct appreciation of high company and good living, unite to make an ideal Commander-in-Chief, why, Dalgan will be the man of men!...”
“But surely we need something more,” she said, meeting Bertham’s glance with doubt and questioning.
“Something indeed!” he returned dryly. “But be kind to me, and let me forget my bogies for a little in hearing of all the good that you have done and mean to do.... Tell me of your experiences at Kaiserswerke amongst the Lutheran Deaconesses—tell me about your visit to the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul at the Hospital of the Charité, or your sojourn with the dames religieuses of St. Augustine at the Hôtel Dieu. Or tell me about your ancient, super-annuated, used-governesses. I should like to know something of them, poor old souls!...”
“They are not all old,” she explained, “though many of them are used-up, and all, or nearly all, are incapable; and Bertham, with a very few exceptions, sensible and ladylike as most of them are, they are so grossly ignorant of the elementary principles of education that one wonders how the poor pretense of teaching was kept up at all? And how it was that common honesty did not lead them to take service as housemaids? and how the parents of their pupils—Heaven help them!—could have been blind enough to confide the training of their children to such feeble, incompetent hands?”
“It is a crying evil,” said Bertham, “or, rather, a whimpering one, and needs to be dealt with. One day we will change all that.... As to these sick and sorrowful women, the generation that will rise up to take their places will be qualified, I hope, to teach, by having learned; and the quality of their teaching will, I hope again, be guaranteed by a University diploma. And, superior knowledge having ceased to mean the temporary possession of the lesson-book, children will learn to treat their teachers with respect, and we shall hear fewer tales of the despised governess.”