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BY SPECIAL

APPOINTMENT

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THE
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

AUGUST 1916.

THE TUTOR’S STORY.

BY THE LATE CHARLES KINGSLEY,
REVISED AND COMPLETED BY HIS DAUGHTER, LUCAS MALET.

Copyright by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. in the United States of America.

CHAPTER XXVII.

I drew aside the curtain, unlatched the casement, and leaned out. Upon the elms in the Fellows’ Garden, the lawns, and laurel shrubberies, moonlight lay soft and white. But looking upward I saw, above the angle of the parapet, a great column of smoke, dashed with fiery flakes, surging into the wind-swept sky. I hurried into my dressing-room, which overlooked the inner court, and there a strange scene met my eyes. A red glare, jets of smoke and angry flame deformed the opposite façade; while, over the grass plats and paved ways of the little quad and about the fountain in the centre, dark shapes rushed to and fro, raised hands and upturned faces showing unnaturally pale and distorted in the dreadful light.—A living page torn from Dante’s Inferno, it seemed.

The fire was here, then, close at hand, within the precincts of the College itself.

Shocked and alarmed, I searched for my keys—I was always a careful and methodical person—that I might lock away Hartover’s letter in my desk. But my study lamp had burned low, and, between agitation and the semi-darkness, I failed to put my hand on them; so thrust the letter between the pages of a big lexicon lying on the writing-table, and ran out, dragging on my gown.

When I got on to the landing I found I had not brought my sporting key. I would have gone back for it; but the noise increased below, while men, racing down from the upper stories, shouted, in passing, that the Master’s Lodge was alight and lives endangered. I remembered that Mrs. Dynevor, the Master’s sister, and her daughters—the young lady who had made herself so innocently pleasant to me at dinner—were still his guests, and this added to my alarm. After all, who would think of entering my rooms at such a moment as this? I ran on, leaving my outer door unfastened.

The whole population of the College seemed to be congregated in the small quadrangle, from vice-master and senior fellows—‘grave and reverend signors,’ equally able and ready to appreciate good wine, a good dinner, an apt Greek quotation or pawky Latin joke—to gyps, scullions and cooks. Under the direction of the city fire brigade, a chain of willing workers had been formed passing buckets from hand to hand from the fountain to the side door of the Lodge. But it was only too evident the fire had firm hold, and the means of arresting it were sadly inadequate.

Anxious to know if the ladies were in safety, I made my way towards the Master, who, calm and dignified, tried to pacify a little group of terrified women—among whom I gladly recognised Mrs. Dynevor and her younger daughter—torn from their sleep only half-clothed, and wrapped in shawls and coverlets. But just as I reached him a cry of horror went up from the crowd.

The Lodge, sandwiched in between the Chapel on one side and Hall on the other, is the oldest portion of the College buildings, dating from pre-Reformation times. Looking up, now, at the low narrow windows of the third floor, I saw, as others had just seen, in the light of a sudden outburst of flame, a girl’s face, her arms outstretched in agonised appeal between the heavy bars.

‘Alice,’ the Master cried aloud, for the moment losing his fine composure. ‘Alice, left behind in the blue bedroom! I thought she was here. And—merciful powers—the fire between us and her!’

Careless of the restraints of age and of his official position, he broke away, almost roughly, from poor Mrs. Dynevor, who clung to him weeping, and rushed towards the side door. A sudden energy seizing me—I was half maddened already by pity and excitement—I kept pace with him.

‘Show me where? Tell me how to reach the blue room, sir,’ I cried; and calling to the nearest fireman, we three went on into the burning house—while awed silence fell upon the crowd without.

What a labyrinth of a place it was, all wainscotted and panelled too, the woodwork like so much tinder from age and dry rot! We ran through passages choked with acrid fumes, up stairs dripping with foul water, past the doors of pleasant studious rooms where we heard the fire hissing and crackling within; finally half-way down a long corridor—and there we stopped short. Ahead of us stretched an apparently impenetrable barrier of smoke; and beyond it, felt rather than seen, a redness of bellowing flame.

Three times we pushed forward into the smoke, and thrice staggered back half senseless. The third time I got far enough to find the floor burning and crumbling beneath my feet. All ingress was cut off.

‘Ah! the poor child, the poor doomed child,’ the Master wailed, stirred to the depths of his kindly and genial nature. ‘She must die—and, oh! my God, what a death.’

‘Can they raise no ladder to the window from the court? I asked, distracted by the sight of my old friend’s grief.

‘What use? You forget the bars.’

‘Can we break through no party-wall?—from a side room?’

‘Yes—a side room. The door is there—within the smoke—on the left, if you can reach it. God bless you for the thought—and we may save her yet.’

‘Have you an axe?’ I cried to the fireman.

‘Trust me for that, sir,’ he answered.

And we again passed into the curtain of smoke, hand in hand, I foremost. Choking, blinded, stifled, in a hideous light which yet was almost total darkness, I groped along the wall for the door. It could not have been more than five yards off, but those yards seemed to lengthen into miles. The Master gave in, not from lack of courage or determination, but simply from physical exhaustion—and, with a groan, fell fainting.

‘Carry him back,’ I panted, and feeling for the fireman’s hand snatched the axe from it.

‘Come back, too, sir,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘or you’re a dead man.’

But nothing was further from my thoughts, or from my wishes, than turning back. A strange exhilaration possessed me. The heavy weight of trouble about the dear boy, of trouble about Nellie, was lifted off me. I felt strong and free in the choking red darkness of the burning house, almost as I felt strong and free when I saved the pack, under the open sky, on the crest of the fells high above royal Hover. The student, the man of thought and of books, had given place to the man of action, of adventure and practical achievement. I knew full well that I took my life in my hand. What did that matter? If I lived, I lived; if I died, I died; and—equally in either case—might God have mercy on my soul! But, honestly I can declare, I never felt more at peace, more happy, than as—half-asphyxiated by nauseous vapours—I groped my way along the smoke-hidden wall, found the handle, turned it, and, opening the door, passed into a comparatively clear atmosphere.

Slamming the door to behind me, I crossed the room and thrusting some furniture aside, began hewing at the wall, with a singular light-heartedness of fury. Mercifully the wall was only lath and plaster. In less than five minutes I cleared a way into the fateful blue bed-chamber beyond.

Ah! what a cruel sight! On my right flames flickered up the half-burned door. The plaster was dropping from the ceiling. Blue tongues of fire ran along the skeleton uprights. All one side of the room glowed red in hideous decay. The bed-hangings were just flashing into a blaze.

Where was she, the innocent friendly young girl, with whom I had conversed and to whose simple singing I had listened, so far from all hint of tragedy and danger, but a week or two ago?

Crouched below the window, faint whether from that agonised crying for help, or from terror, she had curled her limbs together and laid her down to burn piecemeal. There was nothing to be seen among the white robes but a long tress of brown hair and her poor little bare feet, which quivered convulsively as though in momentary expectation the flame would reach them and the torture begin.

‘Alice—Miss Dynevor,’ I called, but she did not move.

I tore a blanket from the bed, wrapped her in it, lifted her up and bore her back through the opening in the wall, rudely enough.

And then?—How to escape I knew not. The door I had entered by, almost impossible then, must be wholly so by now. The window was useless; the lights too narrow for a body to pass through, even had they not been barred. We were trapped indeed—the horrible moment only postponed awhile, and for two lives now instead of one. Still that strange exaltation held me. Never had I felt, as just then, the worthlessness of mere earthly life. What did it signify to the world, what did it signify to me, whether I was what men call alive, or what men call dead! I had tried for once to live for some purpose; and—as it seemed—had failed. I had thought, in myself, that I could help God; but God had chosen to go His own way—or let the devil go his—and do without me. Now all I knew was that, although I was not necessary to God, God was more necessary to me than ever before. Yes, though He slew me, would I trust in Him!

Nevertheless, burn this young girl should not if I could help it. I made up my mind what to do—quickly enough, as was needful, for the room we had just left was all aflame. I had cut through one wall. I would try to cut through another; and, if I could not, I would wrap the blanket so closely round her that she should smother rather than burn⸺

All this darted through my mind, as thoughts are said to through a drowning man’s, in an instant of time. Not three minutes, indeed, had we been together in that second room before I was hewing at the wall.

The first stroke jarred me to the shoulders. This was of brick, then. And how thick?—How could I tell? My heart sank within me, I own. A four-inch wall I might pierce. But a nine-inch, a fourteen-inch—and those forefathers of ours stinted neither material nor labour. They built solidly. Heaven help me—for my arms were aching and stiff already; and, even had they not been, I dared not strike too hard lest I broke the axe-handle, which was light and thin.

A brief space, which seemed infinite, while the flames crackled behind us and the room filled with smoke.

Again a brief space, and a frightful thought crossed my mind. Even if I succeeded, what was beyond? Might not the adjoining room be on fire likewise?

For the strain became too great, too prolonged. Exhausted as I was by violent exertion in that stifling atmosphere, reaction set in. It was, I honestly believe, more physical than moral; but once more I felt that cruel sinking of the heart, along with almost uncontrollable terror of the bodily torment surely awaiting me. Trapped, hopeless, lost—my arms dropped at my sides.

Shame, though, shame that I should turn craven now! So, praying as I had never prayed before, I heaved up weary hands and struck a desperate blow, which—cracked the axe-handle. But for this I could afford to care little, since I had felt the whole structure shake and bulge under that blow. I clutched the handle in both hands, and butted with the axe-head at the wall, using every ounce of force left in me.

A full yard of bricks and rubble fell outward with a mighty crash; and I, lurching forward, saw below me, touched by slanting rays of white moonlight, the wet steps of a winding stone stair. For some seconds I was too weak, from sheer thankfulness, to move.

Then, not without an effort—for I felt childishly fearful of losing sight of those cool wet steps for however brief an interval—I turned and raised Alice Dynevor from the ground, bidding her wake, telling her all was well, that we were saved; and gathering her in my arms, I put her, feet foremost, through the jagged, blessed cleft in the wall.

As I did so, my ears were greeted by a cheer, and a dozen gownsmen swarmed up the slippery stairway, strong young hands outstretched to help, eager young voices pouring forth rejoicing and generous praise. How good it was, how beautiful, how sustaining after the vision of hell, which I had met, battled with, and, God be thanked, overcome and left behind!

They would have borne us away in triumph in their enthusiasm; but Alice Dynevor stood up, shrinking and drawing the blanket closer round her.

‘No,’ she faltered. ‘Take me—you take me—I am frightened—let no one touch me but you.’

So, not a little affected by her trust in me, I gathered her up once more, staggered down, and out into the sweet clear open air, while the young men held me right and left. She had twined her arms tight round my neck, still quivering and trembling in every limb.

In the courtyard the crowd fell apart, cheering, as the Master came to us. He was calm and collected; but his face worked with emotion as he lifted Alice Dynevor off my shoulder. And as he did so, I felt upon my cheek, upon my lips—was it my fancy?—surely not—a kiss, warm and ardent. A living woman’s kiss—the first I had ever known since my mother’s kisses in childhood, long years ago.

I was somewhat of a stoic—stoic by ill-health and cold blood; stoic by long self-restraint; yet that kiss made me start and shudder, not with pain. I could not forget it. The sensation of its impress remained with me for many hours.

I ascertained that, although the Master’s Lodge was practically gutted, a fair proportion of its contents in the way of books and furniture was saved. The fire, successfully checked right and left, had spared both the Chapel and Hall. With that assurance, worn out both in body and mind, bruised, scorched, begrimed, a sorry enough sight, I managed to slip out of the kindly and excited throng unobserved. Assuredly I had earned my sleep to-night!

But another disquieting episode was in store for me before I got it.

For as, wearily and painfully, I climbed my staircase, I heard footsteps coming out from my rooms. I hurried to the best of my power; but, ere I reached the first landing, they travelled on cautiously to the second. I followed thither. Doors stood open on to rooms, empty and dark, for the men were still busy in the court below. But in one I saw a twinkling light. I entered, without apology, to find friend Halidane, hastily divesting himself of coat and waistcoat preparatory to going to bed.

‘My dear Brownlow!’ he exclaimed, with effusive cordiality, though, as I fancied, some confusion. ‘What brings you here? What do you want? Alas! I see you are hurt. Let me come down and dress your wounds.—Nay, nay, do not deny me the christian joy of tending on a christian hero in his suffering and distress.’

‘You were in my rooms just now, were you not?’ I asked bluntly.

‘I—why should I be in your rooms? Or rather, indeed, why should I not? I looked in at your door, it being unfastened, hearing you had left the quad, and longing to assist you after your fatigues. But, finding no light, came upstairs at once. I assure you—Ah! do not deny me—let me help you to prepare for rest.’

‘No, thank you,’ I said, convinced, from his very anxiety to allay my suspicions, that he lied. Smug though his countenance was, he could not hide an expression which spelled guilt—at least so I thought. As for his not looking me in the face when he spoke, he never did so—hence nothing could be inferred from that.

I turned to go, while he alternately bepraised my conduct and bemoaned my sufferings—one as fulsomely as the other. He followed me to my door, nervously, as I thought; but I sported him out firmly, if civilly, leaving him in no doubt that I did not covet his presence. I lighted a lamp, and then I hastened to examine the big book. I reasoned with my alarm, for it was not possible that he knew Hartover’s letter lay hidden in it. But alarm remained. I was constantly and radically distrustful of the man. Tired out though I was, before all things I must make sure the letter was safe.

Yes, it was safe enough. With a sigh of relief I locked it away in my desk. But what was that on the shiny surface of the table?—A large drop of tallow.

All my suspicions revived. I opened the lexicon again. I did not know at what page I had put in the letter, but I found out only too soon. Inside the leaf edges was a smear of tallow, which led me to notice a couple more big drops badly defacing the text. Clumsy rogue! For surely there was a candle on his chimney-piece when I saw him upstairs? Still, it might have been the gyp or bed-maker. No; they would certainly be at the fire, and what could they be doing in any man’s room at four o’clock in the morning?

Blaming myself bitterly for my carelessness, I undressed; and lay tossing, sleepless, till dawn, what with exhaustion, excitement, the dread that prying hypocrite had learned my dear boy’s secret, and—must I admit it?—the memory of Alice Dynevor’s kiss.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

And here I must make a confession, if I am to put my story honestly upon paper. For the events of that night produced results upon which I cannot look back with satisfaction.

True, the position in which they placed me was none of my own seeking, but forced on me by circumstance. Still, I cannot wholly excuse myself of fault. Like most men, I suppose, I possess a fair share of vanity; though, heaven knows, in my case, what with lameness, poverty, and the obscurity of my early lot, vanity had little enough, so far, to feed upon. Perhaps, on this very account, it was all the more greedy of sustenance. My rescue of Alice Dynevor was the nine days’ wonder of the College. I was acclaimed a veritable hero. This affected me but little. Granted the opportunity, a score of men, as I told them, would have done everything I had, and probably done it ten times better. Having risked my life once to save a few hounds, there was no great credit in risking it a second time to save a human being.

But the matter did not end there. It would have been better had it done so—for my conscience’ sake, and, I am afraid, for the peace of mind of others. What my kind old friend the Master said to me I shall not repeat. Still less shall I repeat what was said to me by Mrs. Dynevor. Who dare measure the tenderness of a mother’s heart or the generosity of its gratitude?

While the Lodge was refitting and rebuilding, the Master removed to a house in Trumpington Street, near the Fitzwilliam Museum, surrounded by large park-like grounds. The three ladies were still his guests; indeed, report declared they had taken up their abode with him permanently. Here I was asked to dinner often, twice a week perhaps; and told, moreover, to consider myself on the footing of an intimate friend, free to come in and out when I liked. And pleasant enough was that permission. Pleasant to a lonely man, such as I, to meet bright smiling faces, to sit and talk, or listen to music, to be petted—mothered almost—by a comely older woman, welcomed and made much of by younger ones. The whole thing was new to me—new as it was flattering and charming. I slipped into something approaching intimacy before I realised what was happening.

For, as the days went by, I could not but perceive that Alice, the girl whose life I had saved, bestowed on me very kindly glances—glances in which I, though unskilled in such language, read something deeper and—shall I say?—sweeter than mere gratitude. To her kiss—if kiss indeed it was—given under the stress of great emotion, I did not attach importance. To do so would have been, in my opinion, both unchivalrous and fatuous. But, as between man and maid, there is a light in young eyes which can hardly be mistaken by even the most cold-blooded or most ignorant. And that light I beheld, evening after evening, upon her smiling and ingenuous countenance.

She was not, as I have already said, particularly pretty, or particularly clever, or particularly anything beyond being well educated and well brought up, with the good manners which come of an amiable nature and the habit of moving in the society of her equals. But for the experiences of that fearful night I should, in all probability, have met her, parted from her, and remembrance of her would have faded from my mind altogether. As it was, I could not but observe—nor deny I took a certain pleasure in observing—that she sought and preferred my company; that when we talked she led the conversation, in as far as she knew how, to tender, earnest, fanciful subjects—such as, in those days, were called ‘sentiment’—and tried to gain a response from me. And, within certain limits, my vanity being flattered though my heart was untouched, I did respond. I had no wish to mislead her; but I was weak and self-indulgent in that, the present being agreeable, I let things drift.

I do not pretend to justify, or indeed quite to understand my own state of mind at that period. I was still under the influence of my trouble and disappointment about Hartover, the bitterness of my own inability to help the dear boy, and save him from the consequences of his own ill-judged action. I trembled for his future. I had written to him, and oh! what a letter to write. To be at once truthful and moderate required all my judgment and tact. I could not approve, yet I feared to alienate him by expression of my real feeling. My love for Nellie Braithwaite told on me, too—and the temptation to profit by Hartover’s marriage and press my own suit. Thus, perplexed and unhappy, I fell, I own, from high standards of endeavour. The things dearest to me I had failed in, or knew were beyond my grasp. A cheaper, commoner way of success and of happiness—happiness, that is, of a sort—lay open to me. Should I fling aside impossible ideals, and take it?

For I could not but observe, further, that Mrs. Dynevor, and the Master himself, looked on at my intercourse with Alice complacently enough; that the former managed adroitly to throw us together, encouraged us to sing and read together, found opportunities for leaving us alone often—and too often. After all, I was no unfit match for her daughter. I was already a fellow and tutor of my College, with the prospect of a good college living hereafter: the prospect, if the Hartover interest did fail me—and fail me, I felt pretty sure for many reasons, it would not—of presentation to the first rich living in Lord Longmoor’s gift which might fall vacant if I chose to apply for it. I was as well born as the Master. He had made his way in the world, even as I was in the act of making mine, by personal ability and scholarship. Hence, on the score of station, there could be no valid objection to my suit.

Should I then—for there were actually times when I began to ask myself this—renounce high romance, and the many sacrifices and sorrows which go along with it, and content myself with a comfortable country rectory and the company of an amiable and affectionate wife—a very respectable and respected manner of existence after all, with chances, moreover, of doing much good after a quiet unostentatious fashion?

Who could blame me if I accepted such a future?

No one, surely—unless I blamed myself. There was the crux, the rub. For should I not blame myself, and that increasingly as years went on, unless I renounced my present standards and declined upon altogether lower levels of thought and effort; unless, in fact, I allowed myself to sink into a certain moral and mental sloth—the sloth of one who, hearing, refuses the call to battle, preferring ignobly to ‘stay by the stuff’?

Thus outwardly in lively and in pleasant intercourse, inwardly in travail of spirit and indecision, time passed until the end of the Lent term was well in sight.

Then, one evening, when I had been dining at the house in Trumpington Street, as I bade the Master good-night, he told me that he, and Mrs. Dynevor and her daughters, intended to spend the vacation at Bath, and invited me to join the party as his guest.

‘You really must come, Brownlow,’ he said, ‘for my young ladies count upon your escort for the various expeditions they propose to make in the neighbourhood of the city of Bladud. They will be sadly put out if you desert us—and so, my dear fellow, shall I.’

He laid his hand kindly upon my shoulder.

‘I have come to depend upon your companionship more than I ever have on that of any man of your age. It is a pleasure and entertainment to me—I had almost said a solace. For we portly old bachelors have our hours of regret, you know, for the family life which, for some reason good or bad, or from no reason at all but our own laziness, we rejected, or missed, in our earlier years. There comes a time to most of us when, if a man is wholesome, his heart in the right place, he grows tired of living for and by himself, and begins to look to the second generation, to sons and daughters, for his interest and hold on life. A risky time!—Some old fools try to retrieve the position by marrying. That form of senile dementia, thank heaven! has not attacked me as yet. But I own I like having young people about me. And specially, Brownlow, I like having you in and out of my house. So, my good fellow, be prepared to pack up your traps by this day week, and start with us for Bath. We shall take a post-chaise as well as my carriage, and make a two days’ journey of it.’

His affection touched me deeply, the more so that I could not disguise from myself the meaning and purpose of that which he said. It was an invitation, surely, to declare myself in respect of Alice Dynevor, an assurance that such a declaration had his approval and support. I was both embarrassed and troubled by self-reproach. Immediately, however, my course of action was clear. I told him, with many expressions of genuine sorrow, that it was impossible for me to accompany the party to Bath, since I had already promised to spend the vacation with friends in the country—friends whom I had known when I was at Hover. The promise was of long standing, one which, without flagrant discourtesy, I could not break. Though evidently disappointed, and even a little vexed, he admitted the justice of what I said.

‘Well, well; perhaps, though you cannot go with us, you can join us at Bath for a week before our return.’

And he asked me one or two questions about these Yorkshire friends, which fortunately I could answer without making any mention of Nellie.

I walked back to my College deep in thought. For, clearly, I must not play with the situation any longer. I must arrive at a final decision. I must pull myself together and refuse to drift. Once and for all I must know my own mind. But to do so I must see Nellie Braithwaite first.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A warm drizzling mist, shot with silver light where the April sun vainly tried to break through, covered the hedgeless fields, dark plough and green pasture, and the great fen lands, as I drove out the twenty miles from Cambridge to Westrea. I had hired a gig from the livery stable, driven by a superannuated post-boy, a withered scrap of a creature, toothless and—rather to my relief—silent, save for professional clickings and chirrupings addressed to his horse. The gig bobbed and curtsied over the rutted cross-country roads at a bare six miles an hour. We passed but few villages, a few scattered cottages, a few farm-carts—these mostly drawn by oxen, to me an unusual sight. The country was bare, featureless, sparsely inhabited, and sad. Once or twice the mist, lifting, disclosed vast reed-beds and expanses of still blue-brown water, off which, with strange plaintive cries and a mighty whirring and beating of wings, great flocks of wild fowl rose.

As we neared our destination the landscape assumed a more cheerful character, being diversified by low hills, fine timber trees, and patches of wood; more prosperous, too, with neater cottages, a better type both of farm and farming, and clean running brooks in place of stagnant fen.

Directed by the rubicund and jovial host of a wayside inn, we turned off the main road, through a field gate, and drove some quarter of a mile down an avenue of fine oaks to a comely red-brick house set in the hollow—tile-roofed and gabled, with stacks of high twisted chimneys, the whole dating, as I judged, from the latter part of the seventeenth century. In front of it a garden the box-edged borders bright with spring flowers, brick walls—against which fruit trees were trained—on either hand, stretched down to the stream, here artificially widened into a sort of moat, its banks supported by masonry. Even now, through the drizzling rain, the place seemed to tell of ample, if homely, comfort and prosperity.

Crossing the stream by a hump-backed brick bridge, the gig drew up, amid flutter of pigeons and barking of dogs, before a square porch, where Braithwaite met me with extended hand.

‘Well—so here you are,’ he said. ‘And welcome to Westrea—no man more so; though the skies might have treated you in kindlier fashion, we must own.’

Then, as I clambered down and tipped my ancient driver, he lifted out my carpet bag and called to Nellie. And I, looking once again into her beautiful face, knew, beyond all question of doubt, that the words asking the Master’s niece, Alice Dynevor, to be my bride would never be spoken. No—whether hopeless or not as to the final issue, here my heart was anchored; so that, failing the beloved woman who stood before me, I must go mateless to the end of my days.

Nellie’s greeting was very quiet. Yet I fancied my coming gave her pleasure, for her cheek flushed and the old witch-smile played about her lips. Still, I use the word ‘woman’ advisedly. For, even in the dim light of the porch, I was conscious of a change in her—of something lost, yet something gained and added; of a greater poise, a greater dignity, for hers was—may I not say is, and that how thankfully?—one of those natures which experience and trial serve to mature and enrich rather than to break.—Would there were more of such; for are they not the salt of the earth, the divinely given leaven which, unto strength, courage, righteousness, leavens the whole lump? Ah! what a wife for my dear, weak, wayward, noble boy, Hartover!—Or, he being free no longer, what a wife for⸺

Sternly I put that thought from me. To indulge it would be to sink myself in intoxicating dreams and visions, drench my senses with sweet poison, emasculate my reason and my will—in a word, unman myself. Since her presence affected me even more profoundly than I anticipated, I must, in honour, arm myself against the delight of it with all the fortitude and prudence I possessed.

We had passed straight from the porch into the main living-room of the house, a large hall with a heavily timbered ceiling and a big open fireplace at the further end. Some logs burned cheerfully upon the hearth—a not unwelcome sight after my long drive in the drizzling mist. Here sweet-faced Miss Ann Braithwaite, in quakerish grey gown and close net cap, received me with kindly speech. Everything spoke of the same easy circumstances and solid comfort, along with an exquisite cleanliness very pleasant to the eye and touch.

At supper Nellie performed her duties as hostess with a pretty solicitude and dignity; and the evening passed in talk, Braithwaite glad enough, I think, to hold forth once more on social reform, national and political subjects. He certainly talked well and to the point—his views humorously and, I must add, enlighteningly different to those I was accustomed to hear set forth in College Common-rooms or at the High Table in Hall. But I fancied his radicalism sounded a less temperate and genial note, and that he looked anxiously at Nellie from time to time. His manner to her was peculiarly gentle, and he referred to her opinion with an almost wistful desire to interest her in our conversation.

I had no opportunity of speaking with her alone that night, for which I was not altogether sorry. Better to wait until the first sweet torment of her nearness had worn off, and I had schooled myself to accept it without nervousness.

I rose to a day as brilliantly fair as yesterday had been wet. Sunshine and fresh air pervaded the house. A side door, in the hall—where breakfast awaited me—stood open on to the garden, the moat, and avenue of oaks climbing the gentle grass slope beyond to the sky-line.

After breakfast Braithwaite went out on to his farm, and Miss Ann retired to attend to some household business. Nellie, an all-round blue apron tied over her light gown and a white sunbonnet upon her head, stood at the table gathering scraps of broken food into a bowl. She was going, so she told me, to feed some broods of young chickens in the Orchard Close; and, on my asking permission to go with her, seemed pleased to have my company. As we passed out of the porch into the morning sunshine, I could not but exclaim at the peaceful charm of the place.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is peaceful—almost too peaceful, perhaps. But my father does not feel that. He has plenty to occupy him. The land had been neglected and the farm buildings suffered to fall into decay before we came; and you know his energy in making improvements and setting things to rights—working himself and making, not only his labourers, but nature itself work for and with him.’

She glanced at me with a smile of tender amusement.

‘He is happy here,’ she added.

‘And you?’ I asked, perhaps unwisely.

‘If he is happy, I am content,’ she answered. ‘He is the best father living, and—his will is mine, dear Mr. Brownlow. It ought to be so, for he is most indulgent to me. There is nothing I could ask for which he would not give me if he could.’

And she paused.

‘If he could?’ I repeated, for it struck me she alluded to a subject which must be in both our minds, and about which she might be glad to speak.

‘Yes,’ she said; ‘there are things—or at least there is one thing he cannot give me, because it is—or rather was—against his principles and judgment, against his conviction of what is wise and right. And now⸺’

Again she paused.

‘Now it is too late.’

She moved forward quickly and opened the door leading into the Orchard Close—some half acre of ancient turf, in which grew fine old fruit trees, apple, pear, plum, cherry, and shining-leafed walnut. The pears were already in blossom, their pyramids and wreaths of powdery white seen, overhead, against the radiant blue. High brick walls, mellow with age and encrusted in places with lichens of every tint from vivid orange to delicate grey, enclosed the place. Hen-coops were set out upon the warm short grass, over which a busy population of yellow chicks and ducklings scampered towards us—their mothers and foster-mothers, meanwhile, craning ruffled necks between the wooden bars of the coops, with distracted callings and cluckings.

With a wooden spoon Nellie scattered the food among them from her bowl, looking down at the pretty, clean, scrambling little creatures—both she, they, the blossoming trees, and ruddy walls making a charming picture. But a change had come over her. The smile, the play of feature, vanished. The cheek seemed to sharpen, the dark line under the eyes to darken yet more. A settled sadness seemed to touch her. Was it thus she looked when she had not to amuse her father, when she had not to put a force upon herself, and feign cheerfulness for the sake of those about her—when she found herself alone, in short?

Vain heart of mine!—for was this not a confession that she dare be herself before me, that I was privileged to witness what she hid from others? There was a compression about the lips now, a kindling of the eyes, which told me she was coming straight to the point, like the fine and fearless woman she was—but I little expected to what point.

She set down the bowl upon the grass, where the greedy chicks swarmed over and into it, and thrusting her hand within the bosom of her dress drew out a letter.

‘This reached me a week ago,’ she said. ‘I could not show it to my father, nor to dear Aunt Ann. Had you not been coming, I must have written to you, Mr. Brownlow. Suspense was intolerable; and, if you yourself knew, I was sure you would tell me the truth.’

She put the letter into my hand. I recognised the writing at once, and with a feeling of shame and sorrow, amounting almost to horror, looked her in the face. God! how glorious it was in its agony—courage which could meet anything which must be; act on anything which was right; and, with all, such invincible sweetness!

I read the letter.

‘Silly Country Girl—Listen to me, and cease to follow what you will never win and try to reach honours which belong to bolder hearts than yours. You are thrown aside and done with, like his old glove, his old shoe. Know, then—but do not tell it, for the day you do tell shall be the last safe one of your life—that he is married already; and to me, who am far cleverer than you, and can please him better, love him better than you, ignorant little peasant, could ever please or love.’

‘Devil!’ was all I said, as I finished this melodramatic effusion, for anger and disgust choked me.

‘It is so, then?’—from Nellie, watching me.

‘You asked me to be truthful?—It is. I know the handwriting too well.’

‘Whose is it?’ she asked, in a low but steady voice.

‘That of the person—the Frenchwoman—whom he has married.’

‘Mademoiselle Fédore, who used to be at Hover?’

‘Mademoiselle Fédore.’

She raised her head, standing stiffly erect, her whole form tense and rigid for a moment. I could not speak. What comfort could I offer? Her grief was too sacred for me to profane it with any chance words of sympathy. I could only admire, reverence,—aye, and worship—before this martyrdom of true love.

At last: ‘I believed it. Yes—I was sure from the first. But it is very cruel. I have not deserved that insult. Whom have I followed? What honours have I tried to reach? I have striven, dear Mr. Brownlow, not even to think of him. Ever since my father forbade me to see him, or hold any sort of intercourse with him, there was but one thing to do—to obey. And I have obeyed. God knows that I have. You believe me?’

She glanced up in my face with something of the old witch-smile. My eyes answered yes. I dared not trust myself to speak. She looked down again on to the smooth turf and soft, scrambling, peeping chickens.

‘Tell me—I only saw her once, and saw she was very handsome. But is she—is she worthy of him?’

‘Do not ask me,’ I said, weakly perhaps; but I was hard pressed, wellnigh desperate. ‘Judge for yourself of the nature of the woman who could write such a letter.’

‘No, if I begin to judge, if I begin to fancy, I should go—it is wrong, it is wicked of me—but I feel, at times, I should go mad.’

She was silent again, looking down. Then:

‘God forgive her—for this letter has undone the work of months. Ever since we left Yorkshire, and came here to Westrea, I have struggled for my father’s sake, for Aunt Ann’s—and for my own pride’s sake too—to put the thought of him out of my mind, and interest myself in books, in my father’s schemes, and in my own home duties. I believed I had conquered myself, conquered my—my love. But this letter brought back all the pain, and stirred up something violent and evil in me—something I have never felt before. It is degrading. I am jealous, dear Mr. Brownlow—jealous. Do you know what that means?’

Alas! did I not know?—and most bitterly!

‘But of course you do not. How should you!’ she went on.

How should I indeed?—And she smiled at me in lovely apology, thereby cutting me to the quick. For did not her words, her look, show how wholly innocent and ignorant she was of all personal feeling on my part?

Well, and if so, what had I to complain of? Earlier, had it not been an integral element in that mystic, fantastic inner life of mine, to conceive of her loving the dear boy as deeply, eternally; even though as hopelessly, as I loved her? Now that my conception proved true in fact, what cause had I to be hurt, and to shrink? Was it not inconsistent, illogical, a very height of unreason? I took myself to task for my folly; but I suffered. Meanwhile an idea occurred to me, but I dared not put it into execution yet. In Fédore’s letter was one lie which could and, in justice to the dear boy, ought to be refuted. But I must wait until I could judge better of Nellie’s powers of endurance, and better trust my own calmness and nerve in handling a very delicate subject.

Now I only said to her:

‘Will you trust me with this letter, and let me keep it for the present?’

‘Why?’

‘Because—forgive me if I seem to preach to you—as long as it remains in your possession, you cannot, I think, but read and re-read it.’

‘That is true,’ she said.

‘And each time you do so, you renew your own pain, renew—quite naturally—your sense of injury, of anger at the insult offered you. Yet this renewal works to no good end. It is useless, merely causing you to move in a vicious circle, since it cannot alter the facts or affect the result.’

‘Yes—yes,’ she said. ‘Ah! how well you understand, dear Mr. Brownlow! Keep the letter. It is better out of my possession. And I feel less unhappy now that I have spoken to you. I longed for, yet dreaded, your coming. I knew that I should want to tell you of this—to speak freely to you; and yet I doubted if it were possible to talk on such a subject without seeming wanting in modesty. But you have made it easy by your sympathy—which I feel. It is wonderful. And I am very grateful—more grateful than I can express.’

For the first time her eyes had tears in them, and her brave lips quivered. I could bear no more. I turned and walked away a few steps, the sunshine gay among the pear blossom above my head, warm upon the turf at my feet. Ah, dear God, what a beautiful world—and I to go through it lonely all the days of my life!

Nellie picked up her bowl and came after me, a wistfulness in her sweet face.

‘What is the matter, dear Mr. Brownlow? I have not offended you?’ she said.

‘No—ten thousand times, no,’ I answered. ‘But the times are somewhat out of joint, and—well—would to heaven I were a better, abler man to set them right!’

Just then Braithwaite hailed us from the doorway. We joined him and, with him, went back to the house.

(To be continued.)

LAMENT BEFITTING THESE ‘TIMES OF NIGHT.’

BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

This Lament for martyr, soldier, and sage,

‘Him who had walked through the times of night,’

so apposite to these present times, is from verses in the MSS. of the British Museum, signed in her handwriting, ‘Unfinished. C. Brontë. 70 lines, Novbr. 28th, 1834.’ The lines bear no title. They were preserved by her in a collection of her writings for which she made a title-page, ‘The Scrap Book. A Mingling of Many Things, compiled by Lord C. A. F. Wellesley. C. Brontë, March 17th, 1835.’ The book contains ‘chips from her workshop’ during her nineteenth year, one of her happiest years at home. She was still using the pseudonym of her childhood days, associated with her idol, the Duke of Wellington. In this period she was celebrating heroes; compare her poems ‘Richard Cœur de Lion and Blondel’ and ‘Saul.’

The obvious allusion in the first twelve lines is to the protomartyr of Christianity. The stanza upon the ‘son of wisdom’ refers to Socrates, the protomartyr of Paganism. The lament for the soldier, ‘laid on the battle-plain,’ is set like a gem between these stanzas, and flashes out her conception of the true patriot and hero. She ranks the dying common soldier,

‘His thoughts all for his fatherland,’

with St. Stephen and Socrates, a trinity of martyrs of faith, of patriotism, and of philosophy.

I trust lovers of Charlotte Brontë will welcome, in this centennial year of her birth, the first publication of this poem.

George E. MacLean.

Lament for the Martyr who dies for his faith,

Who prays for his foes with his failing breath,

Who sees, as he looks to the kindling sky,

God and his captain, the Saviour, nigh;

Who sees the mighty recompense,

When soul is conquering flesh and sense;

Sees heaven and all its angels bright,

At the very end of his mortal fight,

At the black close of that agony

Which sets the impatient spirit free;

Then, as in Christ he sinks to sleep,

Weep for the Dying Martyr, weep.

And the soldier, laid on the battle-plain

Alone at the close of night, alone,

The passing off of some warlike-strain

Blent with his latest moan;

His thoughts all for his fatherland,

His feeble heart, his unnerved hand

Still quiveringly upraised to wield

Once more his bright sword on the field,

While wakes his fainting energy

To gain her yet one victory;

As he lies bleeding, cold and low,

As life’s red tide is ebbing slow,

Lament for fallen bravery.

For the son of wisdom, the holy sage,

Full of knowledge and hoar with age,

Him who had walked through the times of night,

As if on his path a secret light

Lustrous and pure and silent fell;

To all, save himself, invisible,

A secret ray from Heaven’s own shrine

Poured on that spirit half divine,

And making a single Isle of light

In the wide blank ocean of Pagan night;

Lament for him as you see him laid

Waiting for Death on the Dungeon bed,

The sickly lamp beside him burning,

Its dim ray falling on sorrow and gloom;

Around him his sad disciples mourning,

As they watch for the hour of awful doom;

And he, by coming death unshaken,

As if that slumber would soon be o’er,

As if all freshened he should waken

And see the light of morn once more.

Ay, on the sage’s, the soldier’s bier

I could drop many a pitying tear,

And as the martyr sinks to sleep

I could in love, in sorrow weep.

...

‘THE IMPERIAL JUNKER.’
WHAT THE KAISER’S OWN MEN THOUGHT OF HIM.

BY A NEUTRAL DIPLOMAT.

My work never brought me into intimate contact with court circles in Berlin, but—as the very existence of my country has hung for years on the tenuous thread of the Kaiser’s whim—I have missed no opportunity (during the decade or more in which special missions for my Government have taken me to various foreign capitals) to study the War Lord through those who, in one way or another, had been given opportunities for forming their estimates of him at first hand. My surest and most intimate knowledge of the Kaiser was gained, perhaps, from German and Austrian diplomatic and consular officials who were either included in the inner circle of his personal friends, or whose duties had been of a character to reveal to them the hidden springs and cogs of their master’s intricate machine of welt-politik. But very illuminative, also, I found the after-dinner confidences of several prominent Americans—notably two world-famous ‘kings of industry’ and an almost equally well known ‘intellectual’—through whom the Kaiser had made cleverly calculated efforts to extend his influence in the United States.

The German and Austrian officials alluded to were, for the most part, pre-war acquaintances, but their attitudes toward the Kaiser and his world policies are of pertinent interest at this time as showing that the present apparently unbroken front of German unity is in reality a structure no less artificial and precarious than the tottering ‘paper castle’ of the German scheme of war finance. But two of the Americans—the very ones, too, I found most impressed by Wilhelm’s ‘guide-counsellor-and-friend’ tactics—I have seen since the first of the present year, and it is a significant coincidence that each of them prefaced a scathing denunciation and sweeping repudiation of the Kaiser with the words, ‘He lied to me!’

It is undoubtedly true, as has occasionally been stated in the British press by those intimately acquainted with Germany and the Germans, that the Kaiser was not an ultra-militarist; or rather, that while he might be so rated according to the standard of less ‘organised-for-war’ countries than Germany, he was not so extreme in his views in this regard as many of the leaders of the so-called ‘Military Party,’ the royal member of which was the Crown Prince. But it is true that he was the leader in fact as well as in name—the soul and the mainspring—of what I may call the ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ movement, which had for its end not only Teutonic ‘kultural’ supremacy, but also Teutonic commercial, financial, and—ultimately—political supremacy. And it is also true that he strove to attain these ends by methods so rough-shod, tactless and cynical that the arbitrament of the sword became the inevitable and only alternative to the national effacement of those countries which stood in Germany’s way.

Let me make myself plain on this point. The Kaiser strove not only to win Germany a place in the sun, but to make Germany the place in the sun, and, in a sense, it is true, as he has so often claimed, that he desired and worked to bring this about by peaceful means. But—he did not follow this course through any inherent love for, or humane predilection toward peace, but only because it was the cheaper way; because it would cost less in treasure and industrial potentiality; because it was calculated to set back Germany less than would the drain of even a victorious war.

He hoped—by building up the most perfect military machine the world had ever known, supplemented by a navy unquestionably designed to equal and ultimately surpass that of Great Britain—to bluff and bully his way through to his goal without paying the price. The principal difference between the Kaiser and the German military party leaders was that the latter proposed to fight first and take what they wanted after all opposition had been crushed, while the former proposed trying to seize what he wanted first and to fight only if some one had the audacity to resist. Both were the schemes of international outlaws, with the militarists comparable to the brigand and the Kaiser to the burglar. That is the most one can say for the Kaiser’s vaunted ‘peacefulness.’

Twice or thrice—notably in the cases of Tsingtau and Bosnia-Herzegovina—the Imperial thief or his accomplices got away, unscathed, with the ‘goods’; but at Agadir his nerve failed him and he was compelled to withdraw with empty pockets. The German military party leaders, knowing his aims and methods rendered ultimate war inevitable, bided their time far more patiently than would have been the case had they not known the Kaiser was no lover of peace for its own sake; that either his bungling or his opportunism must finally make his means, like his end, identical with their own.

It was, therefore, not among even the extremest militarists that one found the deepest distrust of their impetuous emperor, but rather among the members of two other classes (I am not considering the Socialists in this article at all, because the feud between them and the Kaiser was known to all the world), the diplomats and the industrialists. Among German diplomatic and consular officials one met occasional personal favourites of the Kaiser who manifested a kind of sycophantic devotion to him; but the great majority of them—through their broader knowledge of the world, and especially their keener appreciation of the latent might of the British Empire—were restive and apprehensive over the parts they were being compelled to play in a policy which they knew could only lead to a conflict from which the chances of Germany’s emerging victorious were very slender indeed. The most widely informed and most rational of these—and, therefore, the bitterest critics of the Kaiser—were men doing the same character of ‘emergency work’ on which I have so long been engaged myself. Sent on special missions of one kind or another to various parts of the world, they had an appreciation of world ‘values,’ a ‘sense’ for the set of political and racial undercurrents, such as no Prussian Junker ever attained to. Heart and soul in the ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ crusade though they were, there is scarcely one of these I can recall who was not distrustful of the Kaiser’s way of trying to bring the thing about, and, when opportunity offered for them to speak out, several were frankly condemnatory.

Of such was an unusually level-headed German who was a fellow passenger of mine on the British-India mailboat from Rangoon to Calcutta about five years ago. He claimed to have been on a special tour of investigation of Germany’s Pacific colonies and to be taking advantage of his return trip to see what the Netherlands and England were doing in a colonial way. It was just at the crisis of the Agadir imbroglio, and a wireless message announcing the recall of the gunboat Panther (after Mr. Lloyd George’s ‘Mansion House’ speech had brought home to the Kaiser the disagreeable truth that Great Britain was ready to stand by France) was the direct occasion of the conversation I am about to allude to.

Up to this moment I had found my friend unusually reticent on international politics, even for a German diplomat, but his palpable relief at the turn things had taken over Morocco seemed to have the effect of loosening his hitherto well-bitted tongue.

‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I am whole-heartedly glad to hear this news, even though, as a German, the dénouement is a very humiliating one. But for a long time I have been afraid that this periodic waving of a lighted torch over such a powder-magazine as Europe has become would cause an explosion. It will have to come if—if “someone” continues to scatter sparks in the future as he has done in the past. Please don’t understand me as intimating that Germany would not render a good account of herself in such an event (you may be sure that her enemies would have some terrible surprises in store for them); but the folly of the thing lies in the fact that we are already on our way to win by “peaceful penetration” all that the most successful war could give us. But if we should fight a war and chance to lose it—nay, even if it should result in more or less of a draw—Germany will never again have such an opportunity for a commercial—and through that, for a political—conquest of the world as she has enjoyed for the last two or three decades, and as she will continue to enjoy so long, but only so long, as we can keep at peace. That is why I deplore so deeply the fact that we have such⸺’ He checked the half-spoken German expletive that had leapt to the tip of his tongue and concluded with ‘that we are not under a safer and saner leadership.’

Very similar views of the Kaiser’s foreign policy I found were held by many outstanding figures among what I have called the German ‘industrialists.’ In this class I would include the heads of the great shipping companies and all of the important manufactories save only those, like Krupps, which were engaged in turning out war supplies. Herr Ballin was, I am assured, one of those who watched the development of the Kaiser’s insidiously ruthless policy with the gravest misgivings, and it is a German shipper only a shade less powerful than the head of the Hamburg-Amerika line that I am about to quote in this connection. I had met this gentleman more or less casually at several points during his tour of the Far East, but it was not until we chanced to be spending the same week-end at the Peak Hotel, Hongkong, that we had any chance to exchange views.

‘How are German trade prospects in the East?’ I asked him one evening as we sat over after-dinner coffee and cigars on the veranda of the hotel.

‘Colossal, simply colossal,’ was the reply. ‘Quite beyond anything I had hoped to find. Will you please take a look at this,’ and he took from his pocket and unfolded a little publication called ‘The Daily Consular Reports,’ published by the American State Department at Washington. Turning to a report written by the American Consul-General at Hongkong, he pointed to a table of figures preceded by a paragraph of comment. I have not the exact figures in mind at this moment, but their purport was to show the remarkable manner in which Germany’s share of Hongkong’s trade had increased until it was finally greater than that of Great Britain itself.

‘That is the one most significant thing I have observed on my whole tour,’ he said. ‘To fully appreciate the weight of it, you must consider that not only is Hongkong a British port, but that it is also a port whose principal, almost its only, raison d’être was commercial. And now what do we see? To-day—on the strength of the official figures of the representative of a nation that specialises in figures—Germany has 60 per cent. of all its trade. And next year it will have more, and still more the year after. What do you think of that?’

‘I think, in the first place,’ I replied, ‘that it seems rather effectually to dispose of Germany’s contention that she is not enjoying the “freedom of the seas”; and, in the second place, that it would appear to be a remarkable tribute to the efficacy of Emperor William’s welt-politik.’

The latter was a ‘bait’ I had often used successfully before under similar circumstances, and in this instance the ‘rise’ was sharp and clean. Indeed, I think he was rather glad to avail himself of the excuse to avoid the ‘freedom of the seas’ issue.

‘Emperor William’s welt-politik!’ he fairly shouted, grasping the arms of his long reclining chair in his anger. ‘Emperor William’s welt-politik is the worst, almost the one, menace to the continuance of our commercial triumphs. We have done what we have in spite of, not because of, this kind of welt-politik. What is more, it is the one thing that threatens to bring all our achievements to nought. Yes, not only to check our advance, but even to put us back so far that we may never be able to regain the place we hold to-day, to say nothing of the one we might attain to in the course of another decade of peace.

‘See here!’ he exclaimed, raising himself in his chair and peering down across the verdant slopes of the Peak to the arcaded squares of the city and the bay beyond, where the ships of all the world swung at their anchors in the turning tide and a thousand wide-eyed, high-sterned junks came winging home to roost for the night. ‘Do you want to know the reason Germany has already the greater part of the trade of Hongkong? why Germany, if left alone, will ultimately control the trade of the world? There’s the answer. Can you read it?’

Kowloon, with its newly-opened railway disappearing into the ‘China-side’ hills, the grim lines of the four-funnelled British battle-cruiser at the naval dock, the red rectangles of bunting sliding gently down the flag-poles at the sterns of a hundred British merchantmen at the boom of the sunset gun—I scanned these for the answer, but they all seemed to argue the other way—against German dominance.

‘I give it up,’ I said finally. ‘What is it? Where is it?’

‘There,’ he replied, pointing to the solid blocks of tall office buildings in the heart of the town and along the Bund. ‘You see, do you not, that some of the buildings are dark and deserted, and that in others the lights are being turned on? Well then! The lighted ones are German, the dark ones English. That is the answer. The English are at the Cricket Club (see the lights on the veranda) and at Happy Valley—you saw them trooping to one or the other all the way from three o’clock onward. But in some of the German offices those lights will be burning at nine and ten o’clock, and even up to twelve or one on the nights before mail day. That is the answer. We Germans are winning the trade of the world because of our capacity for, our willingness to, work, work, work,’ he concluded, punctuating the final words with blows upon the wicker arms of his chair.

He puffed his cigar in angry impatience for a few moments, peering moodily into the gathering darkness, before resuming. ‘The continuance of our present rate of progress would win us everything if only we could contrive to remain free to concentrate our energies upon it. Instead of working to that end, however, it is as though every move of—from a certain quarter, was deliberately calculated to provoke, to embroil us with, the very powers whom it would serve every material interest we have to remain friendly with. A very little more of the brand of welt-politik that the Kaiser’ (he did not attempt an euphemism this time) ‘has been launching during the last few years, and we will not, cannot, be left free to win on to the goal that is already in sight. There is, perhaps, an even chance—certainly not better than that—that a great European war might be a short-cut to our commercial supremacy; but, the way things are going now, we take no chances. And if we failed to win the war, we could never have the same clear field again. You will understand now why I feel so strongly opposed to an Imperial policy which, if not radically changed, cannot but end in war.’

Between diplomats, colonial officials, manufacturers, shippers, etc., I could mention at least a score of Germans of outstanding prominence whom I heard express views so nearly identical with those already quoted that it will hardly be worth while setting them down here. (These would include, I may say, two men who have rendered important service—one politically and the other as an engineer—to the Kaiser in Asiatic Turkey, and another—whom I had met in East Africa and Samoa—who is a member of the present Cabinet, and, moreover, prominently mentioned for the ‘reconstruction period’ Premiership.) Among all of these there was not a single individual who did not have a far clearer comprehension of ‘world problems’—a less ‘warped’ international perspective—than the Kaiser (from the very one-sidedness of his life) could possibly have had. They may be taken as thoroughly representative of the very small class of Germans whose minds and observations had been sufficiently broad to have made their opinions and admonitions worth heeding. No less ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ than the Kaiser himself, theirs was a practical policy which might have succeeded, while his was a mad piece of international adventuring that not only marked the Kaiser himself for a fall, but—since his country elected to follow him—also made inevitable the downfall of Germany. Had counsellors of this type been heeded, there is little doubt that welt-politik would have been exercised in a manner that would have prevented its becoming, for many years at least, the veritable boomerang into which the Kaiser’s inordinate vanity, cynicism and hot-headedness have converted it. From Great Britain’s standpoint, however, there can be no doubt that it was best that the ‘Imperial Bungler’ should have been allowed to have his own way, that the ‘showdown’ should have been forced at the time it was. The Germany of a decade from now would have been far richer, far more wonderful, far more difficult to defeat than the Germany of to-day. Just as I have heard so many far-sighted Germans say in the course of the last decade, the Kaiser, with his ‘shining armour’ and his trumpetings, has, in the end, only played into the hands of his enemies by awakening the lion which he might have netted—had, indeed, already half netted—in its sleep.

The interesting question which now arises is what attitude these powerful leaders, who feared, distrusted and warned against the Kaiser’s policy for more than a decade, are going to take toward that ill-advised monarch when the once rapidly rising edifice of German commercial and political domination which they had done so much to rear, finally comes down, as come it must, in ruins. Most, if not all, of the men I have alluded to or quoted were already rowing in the Kaiser’s war-galley when the explosion they had so long foreseen and dreaded rent Europe in twain and left them only the dust of their past achievements and less than the ashes of their hopes and dreams. Doubtless they have strained obediently if sullenly at their oars (I have read glowing accounts in the German papers of what several of them have done); but surely not without arrière pensée, not without thoughts of how differently things might have gone if even an amiable nonentity had been their ruler instead of an imperial adventurer.

The fact that, even in the present development of events, Germany’s future, both immediate and remote, looms far darker than even the most prescient or pessimistic of those who followed so mistrustfully the bellicose gesturings of ‘The Mailed Fist’ could have well anticipated, must bode a state of feeling against the man who is responsible for it all that augurs ominously for the lone figure at the helm of the German ship of state when it becomes a case of sauve qui peut in the final wreck. When this day comes—how different a one will it be from ‘Der Tag’ to which the hoodwinked German so long has lifted his glass!—‘I told you so’ will be the mildest of the reproaches that will be launched at the wrecker from the lips of the men whose task it will be to salvage the foundered ship as best they may.

Cut off by the pall of the more imminent war clouds, we on the outside have as yet had little chance to gauge the force of the storm that is gathering to break upon Germany from within. Whether the breaking of that storm will precede and accelerate the coming of peace, or whether the coming of peace will precede and accelerate the breaking of the storm, it is still too early to say. But break it must, sooner or later, and when this hour arrives I feel that I know enough of the temper of the men who distrusted and hated the Kaiser before the war to be safe in saying, that whatever of his just deserts he may have escaped receiving at the hands of the Allies he will stand every chance of having meted out to him at the hands of his own outraged people.

THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: AT ALL COSTS.

BY BOYD CABLE.

One might have supposed it impossible for the Colonel to have found a single favourable condition about the coming fight. His battalion had withered away to little more than half its strength; that remaining half was almost completely worn out with want of sleep, with constant cruel fighting, with forced marching; had scarcely been brought out of the water-logged trenches to rest before being marched up into them again, had the prospect before them now of a desperate fight against enormous odds with no cover but the inadequate scratches that in those days passed for trenches, and with even these battered and smashed by shell fire, swimming in water and liquid mud.

It might even be difficult to understand any reason for his ‘Well, thank Heaven the orders are plain and simple enough this time,’ since those orders were ‘to hold the position at all costs until relieved,’ the words ‘at all costs’ being heavily underlined, if one had not known the nightmare uncertainty that in the Retreat-Advance days worried the harassed commanding officers to a point of distraction. Usually the orders were full of instructions to do this if the Germans retired, to do that if they advanced in strength, to do something else if they attacked any one of a dozen points; to conform to the movements of a certain regiment, to support the advance or cover the retirement of another or another—to have, in fact, enough possibilities to consider and act promptly upon to have kept a dozen heads and a hundred eyes very fully occupied; and all, of course, in addition to the C.O.’s own paramount job of fighting his battalion.

So that after all there was some cause for his relief at the simplicity of the orders which this time bade him hold on ‘at all costs,’ even although it might well be that those orders were the death-warrant of himself and most of his remaining men. He had no doubts as to the nature of the struggle close ahead; indeed there was so little of a secret about it that every officer and man of the battalion was fully aware that the Germans had determined on an attack which was to break through the thin British line. There was to be no manœuvring, no feinting here and striking there, no cunning tactics about this attack. The Germans were going to strike straight and hard and heavy, and burst through by sheer hard fighting and weight of numbers—‘Leastways,’ as the brigade signaller put it in passing on this cheerful intelligence to the battalion signallers, ‘that’s what they think they’re goin’ to do.’

‘I like their bloomin’ cheek,’ said the signaller who took the message. ‘I wonder what they fancy we’ll be doin’ while they break through.’ The fact that a weak battalion of British infantry should consider itself fit to stem the advance of ten times their number of picked German troops did not appear to strike him in any way as being a piece of equally ‘bloomin’ cheek.’

The promised attack, however, did not develop for the next forty-eight hours, and during the whole of that time the battalion had to lie still and suffer such an inferno of bombardment, such a purgatory of bitter cold and driving rain, such a misery of knee-deep mud and crouching in painfully cramped positions, that at the end of the time they were openly praying for an attack, British or German, they did not care which, so long as it ended or even relieved the intolerable waiting.

‘I made up my mind a month ago that I was bound to be killed,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff of ‘C’ Company disgustedly. ‘I’d sorter reconciled myself to bein’ blotted out by a bullet, or blasted off the earth by a Black Maria, or skewered on a bayonet; but blow me if I ever counted on bein’ drownded in a two-foot mud puddle as I looks like bein’ now.’

‘Why don’t the soors[1] come on an’ fight it out,’ said Corporal Smedley. ‘They bukked[2] enough about wot they was goin’ to do. Why don’t they hitherao[3] an’ do it. I’m about sick o’ this shellin’ game.’

‘The shellin’ is bad enough,’ agreed Sergeant Ruff, ‘but I’m sicker o’ this swimmin’ gymkhana. They ought to serve us out a cork jacket an’ a swimmin’ suit an’ a harpoon a-piece instead o’ a rifle, to play this game proper.’

He was certainly fairly entitled to call the shelling ‘bad enough.’ It was the worst they had known yet, and that, for men who had been in it from the first days of Mons, was saying a good deal. The Germans appeared to have selected their portion of the front for the heaviest concentration of their artillery, and a rain of shells fell without ceasing night or day on the battered trenches. The men kept what cover they could, but that was little use against monster shells which blew to fragments them and their cover together. The British artillery was completely overwhelmed, and although it had struggled gallantly to maintain the unequal contest, was unable to afford the slightest relief to the suffering infantry. The casualties in the battalion mounted steadily, and apparently it was merely a matter of time until it should be utterly destroyed; but the men, although they grumbled deep and loud about the weather and the wet and the mud, the slowness of the Germans to attack, the bully beef and the biscuits and the missing of a rum ration, uttered no single grumble about the fate that kept them there or the wounds and death that carried them off singly and in groups.

At dawn of the third day the shelling rose to its highest pitch of fury. The wet ground shook to the roaring blast of heavy high-explosive, the air pulsed and sang to the shriek of passing shells, the crack of bursting high-explosive ‘woolly bears,’ the rip and thud of their shrapnel showers. The noise was deafening, the smoke and reek of high-explosive fumes blinding and choking. The flank of the battalion rested on a road which ran through the British and German lines, and the trenches to both sides of this road appeared to have been selected for the heaviest share by far of the bombardment.

‘They’ll charge across the open and down the road,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff. ‘You see now if I’m not right.’

‘I don’t care a two-anna-bit how or where they charges,’ answered the private he spoke to, ‘if so be they’d only be jildi[4] an’ get on wi’ the drill.’

‘Here they come,’ said the sergeant hurriedly. ‘Dekko[5] the road. Wot did I tell you? ’Strewth, an’ there ain’t ’arf a mob of ’em, I don’t think.’

‘Hold your fire, men,’ called one of the officers. ‘Wait till they get well in the open. Pass the word—hold your fire;’ and down the line of the wrecked trench ran the order from man to man, ‘Hold your fire—pass the word—hold your fire.’

So they held their fire, although on the other side of the road the trenches had already opened at the longer range. Deceived apparently by the silence into believing that the battalion had retired or been annihilated by the storm of shell-fire, the Germans poured out into the open and swarmed down in solid mass. They sang in a deep chorus as they came running heavily and waving their rifles over their heads.

‘Blimey, ’ark at ’em singing,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff. ‘Come on, my bloomin’ canaries, you’ll get somethin’ to sing about presently.’

And they did ‘get something.’ When they were within two hundred yards of the trench an officer’s whistle shrilled, a line of heads and rifle barrels appeared above the parapet, and in one long rolling crash the rifles broke out in the ‘mad minute’ of fire. Now, in the training of the old Regular Army the ‘mad minute’ was a firing practice to which a good deal of time and attention was devoted, and a remarkable proficiency attained in the two essential respects of speed in firing and accuracy of aim. Since it was a practice in which this particular battalion had acquired a notable reputation at a target and range immeasurably more difficult than was now presented to it, the effect on the dense mass of the attack may be imagined. The front rank was simply swept away in the first five seconds of the minute, and for another full fifty-five seconds the bullets beat down on the block of men, chopped up and cut away the advancing face of it, exactly as a chaff-cutter slices to fragments the straw bundle pushed under its destroying knives. At the end of the minute the mass had come to a standstill; at the end of another it had broken and shredded away and was swirling back to cover with the relentless bullets still hailing after it and tearing through and through it.