Suddenly, as I walked along, a youth on a bicycle dashed past the pavement, shouting something I could not catch. More men on bicycles followed. The promenaders began to "sit up and take notice." Carriage horses were being smartly whipped up, and women began to scurry nervously.
Then it seemed to me I could hear something above the roar of the ordinary traffic, a hoarse prolonged shout. Servants now appeared on doorsteps, and looked about anxiously for non-existent policemen, others began closing outside shutters before windows. Just as I reached the Naval and Military Club I saw that the servants had come out, and were about to close both great gates—"In" and "Out." One of these men pointed up the street and advised me at once to seek cover, and I saw in the dim distance what looked like a mighty crowd advancing.
In a second I had darted through the gates, and was safely inside before they closed upon the approaching mob.
I have only a very confused memory of what happened after. Of kindly attentions from the members. Of women's shrieks as their carriages were stopped, and their valuables taken from them. Of the deafening roar of furious male voices, crashings of glass windows, howls of savage exultation, as a hosier's shop close by fell victim to the rioters, the clatter of hoofs from terrified horses. I could see nothing, but the battering upon the club gates added tenfold to the terrifying din. The members withdrew, taking me with them, to the house, and prepared to hold it against the furious mob, should the gates give way.
Such wild moments are not easily forgotten, and why I looked upon John Burns that night at Court with such a peculiar interest was because he led that riot, and suffered imprisonment for so doing.
Looking upon him in Court dress, in the royal enclosure, on intimate terms with the great of the world, though perhaps not the great of the earth, knowing him to hold high office in the government, I marked the change. Then throwing back my mind to those poignant hours in the past, which he had created, I felt that nothing is too extraordinary to belong to the careers of some men; they live through several lives in one. Their Karma is so crowded with stirring events, in the working out of the past, in the makings of the future, that nothing human can be any longer strange to them. The auras of such men are naturally great, because such contrasts of light and shade only come in the lives of men possessed of great and lofty ideals.
For some years little has been heard of the former idol of Battersea. He is facing west now, though a ray or two of dawning light may still touch him in the near future. That wild idealism which comes to men who keep their eyes fixed upon a dawn so long in coming, fades out behind the veil of disillusion, as the days come not, and the years draw nigh with no pleasure in them. Man's ingratitude to man is one of the cruelest tests imposed upon the soul of idealism. The soul that can bear it without a tinge of cynicism has risen to mighty heights.
Such grandeur of soul was possessed by Elsie Inglis. So impregnated was she with pure love of humanity, that when her own country virtually turned its back upon her, this irreparable disgrace, brought upon themselves by her own people, cast no shadow upon her soul. In the years before the war I often noted her lovely aura as I sat amongst an audience, and watched her on a platform fighting woman's battle.
After the war broke out I only saw her once, by the merest chance. It was then I marked that a rainbow was now about her head, and I knew at once that tremendous events were in store for her, though the British Government had refused her services. Ah! the poor little cramped mind of England's officialism! yet has not this very poverty of imagination, this iron-bound worship of worn-out tradition, brought to birth an internationalism which could never have been ours without it? It drove forth hundreds, thousands of ardent souls, to other lands. Rejected by their own, they clasped the pierced hands of strangers, and laid down their own incomparably gallant lives at the foot of a cross, whereon hung those who had at length become their brothers through a commune of agony.
Elsie Inglis received no honor or decoration from the people, or the "Great of England." Only the body, worn very thin in the service of humanity, was at last honored in death. Knowing the woman, and the stuff she was made of, one can only feel intensely this was all as it should have been. To offer Elsie Inglis a medal would have been a sacrilege. "Hands off such souls as hers," is the cry one's every instinct rings forth to the "bauble worshipers" of this world. Besides, and this is a very great besides, those who go with a rainbow about their heads are not destined for earthly honors. They have taken the great step, they have received the great Initiation, a jewel in the blazing crown of eternity, and for them no more are the laurel wreaths that perish. In justice to those throned on high on earth, the above should be remembered. If it is with Elsie Inglis, as I fully believe, she would have understood that for her God and Mammon were eternally divorced, and any attempt at worldly recognition would have been frustrated by "The Lords of Eternal Light and Wisdom," whose chosen disciple she had become.