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THE
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

OCTOBER 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 XXXV.

How many in every age have craved to read the future, to uncover the secrets of the coming years; and to that end have pinned a foolish faith upon the words of fortune-tellers, soothsayers and suchlike blind leaders of the blind. For my part, owing more to a sluggish quality in my blood, probably, than to any special wisdom or strength of mind, I have always felt thankful—since I became capable of reasoned thought—the future was a sealed book to me, or rather a book of which it is ordained I shall turn but one page at a time. To skip, to look on, to take a glance at the end, would be, in my case anyhow, to paralyse will and action by excess of hope or dread. No; depend on it, that is a merciful dispensation which condemns us to make haste slowly in deciphering the story of our lives, learning here a little and there a little, precept upon precept and line upon line. Unquestionably had second-sight been given me as to much which lay ahead, on the glorious June mid-day when I started with Hartover up to town, I should have been utterly unnerved by the prospect of the stern doings I was to witness; and so have proved but a pitiably broken reed on which for him to lean.

I rose early, though still tired; and, somewhat refreshed by a cold bath, dressed and made inquiries regarding Hartover. Finding he still slept, I left a message for him and went out.

I have observed that, in fatigue, the mind is peculiarly responsive to outside influences. It was so with me, as I walked along the familiar streets in the radiant morning sunlight. Never had the inherent poetry of Cambridge, its dignity and repose, appealed to me more forcibly. My filial affection went out to this place which had sheltered my youth and inexperience, nourished my intellect, given me the means of livelihood, given me, also, many friends—went out to its traditions, to its continuity of high endeavour through centuries of scholarship, of religious and of scientific thought. What a roll of honour, what a galaxy of famous and venerable names, it could show!

But I had no time to linger, to-day of all days, over meditations such as these. Not past splendours but very present anxieties claimed me. I hastened my steps, and passed in under the fine Tudor gateway of my own college just as the men—‘a numerous throng arrayed in white’—poured out from chapel, into the sunshine and shadow, the green and grey of the big quadrangle.

My object was to obtain speech of the Master; and I was fortunate enough to catch him as he was entering the Lodge. I begged for ten minutes’ talk with him while he ate his breakfast—a request he granted readily, being curious, as I fancied, to learn my errand and, since I had not kept my chapel, whence I came.

I satisfied him on both points, telling him as much as I deemed expedient about Hartover’s unexpected descent upon me—to all of which he listened with genuine interest and concern.

‘And now, sir,’ I said, in conclusion, ‘the question arises as to whether I can be spared from my college duties until this painful business is placed upon, what at all events approaches, a reasonable and workable footing?’

‘Which signifies, being interpreted—am I prepared to sanction your doing that which you fully intend to do whether I sanction it or not? Eh, Brownlow?’

I acquiesced smiling, relieved to find him in so sympathetic a humour.

‘Very well, then; so be it,’ he said. ‘Having put your hand to this particular plough—at no small personal cost to yourself, quixotic fellow that you are—you are resolved not to look back; and I am the last man to invite you to do so. On the contrary, go on with your ploughing and drive a straight furrow. Only provide, to the best of your ability, against friction and disappointment here. Your absence will necessarily create some. Both I and others shall miss you. You must pay—or rather we, I suppose, must pay—the price of your popularity.’

And he looked at me very kindly, while I reddened at the implied praise.

‘See the amount of friction be as small as possible,’ he went on. ‘And now, as to this erratic young nobleman, Lord Hartover—whose affairs appear to furnish such a promising battlefield to the powers of good and evil—I shall make no attempt to see him, although it would interest me to do so. Knowing all that I do know about him and his family, I should find it almost impossible to ignore personal matters, and equally impossible, in the present crisis, to speak of them without a breach of good taste. I have hardly seen him since the death of his mother, the first Lady Longmoor, when he was a child.—Ah! there was a rare specimen of womanhood, Brownlow, if you like! I stayed at Hover frequently during her all too brief reign. This young man may esteem himself fortunate if he inherits even a tithe of her charm of person and of nature.’

After which pleasantly encouraging words I rose to depart. While, as the Master held out his hand to me⸺

‘Remember I am content to pull the strings unseen,’ he added. ‘Consult me by letter if you need my advice. Count on me in respect of pounds, shillings, and pence, too, if your own funds do not cover the expenditure in which you may find yourself involved. We must prepare for contingencies—Detective Inspector Lavender to wit. With his participation, by the way, I should strongly advise you not to acquaint Lord Hartover unless absolutely compelled. Convict the woman, but, if possible, do so privately. Avoid all appearance of running her down; since, for sentimental if no deeper reasons, it might lead to a breach between yourself and the young man which would be lamentable in the extreme.’

This last bit of advice was sound, but far from easy to follow. The more I thought it over—as we posted those fifty odd miles, by Audley End, Bishop Stortford, Broxbourne and Tottenham, from Cambridge up to town—the more clearly I saw how greatly the fact of my having already called in the help of a detective increased the difficulty of my seeing Mademoiselle Fédore and demanding the explanation Hartover desired. Could I do so without taking Inspector Lavender into my confidence regarding Hartover’s discovery? And could I take Lavender into my confidence without curtailing my own freedom of action and inviting a public exposure of Fédore which must be abhorrent to the dear boy? Here, indeed, was a problem hard of solution! Still it appeared an integral part of the whole, and to the whole I had pledged myself. I must be guided, therefore, by circumstance, dealing with each new phase of this very complicated affair as it presented itself; keeping, meantime, as cool a head and quiet a mind as might be. To meet danger half-way may be less an act of prudence than a waste of energy. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof—and the good thereof likewise, if a man has faith to believe so.

We were to dine on the way, and to reach the great house in Grosvenor Square between nine and ten o’clock. There, as I learned from Hartover, he still—when he pleased—occupied a set of rooms upon the ground floor, with a private entrance from the side street, which I well remembered.

‘It isn’t that I have any particular love for being under the family roof,’ he told me. ‘But I saw the Rusher wanted to oust me and collar those rooms for himself, and I did not choose to have it. So I stuck to them. Her Magnificence couldn’t give me notice to quit without appealing to my father, and she really had not the face for that. There are limits to even her audacity! Now she and I are like buckets in a well. When she arrives, I depart and take up my abode elsewhere. Quarrelled with her? Good Lord, no. She is the most impossible person to quarrel with on the face of the earth. As slippery as an eel—I beg your pardon, a mermaid, shall we say? It does sound more polite. But hold her you can’t. She slithers through your fingers, in that fascinating, mocking, laughing way of hers—you know it?’

Did I not?⸺

‘And leaves you, feeling like every sort of fool, cursing, most consumedly, both her and yourself.’

He laughed not quite pleasantly.

‘But, the devil helping me, Brownlow, I’ll be even with her some day yet. When my father dies—always supposing I survive him, which quite conceivably I shall not—her Magnificence and I will square accounts. It’ll be a little scene worth witnessing. I hope, dear old man, you may be present!’

A wish I could not altogether find it in my heart to echo. But, as he fell silent, staring out over the sun-bathed country, through the cloud of dust raised by wheels and horse-hoofs—subtle lines of care and of bitterness deforming the youthfulness of his beautiful face—I was spared the necessity of answering, for which I was glad.

All day—though towards me he had shown himself uniformly courteous and gentle, loving even—the boy’s spirits had fluctuated, his moods being many and diverse. At one time he was full of anecdote and racy talk, at another steeped in gloom or irritably explosive, swearing in most approved fine-gentleman fashion at any and every thing not exactly to his taste. In short, while he avoided any mention of the object of our journey and our conversation of last night, I could not but see these were persistently uppermost in his thought, keeping his nerves cruelly on edge. What wonder, when all his future hung in the balance! How far did he actually love Fédore—how far actually want her proved innocent? I could not tell. His attitude baffled me. Yet it seemed incredible the society of such a woman should continue to satisfy him—that differences of age, station, nationality, education, should not be prolific, at times at all events, of repulsion and something akin to disgust. Quite independent of that matter of the jewels and the ugly suspicions raised by it, must he not have begun by now to measure the enormity of his mistake in marrying her? I, at once, hoped and feared he had. While, as the miles of road fled away behind us beneath the horses’ trotting feet, the sadness of his position grew upon me, until I had much ado to keep my feelings to myself.

Once arrived, Hartover slipped his arm through mine, and we entered the stately house together, while he said, a little huskily:

‘Brownlow, it is good to have you—very good of you to come. Don’t imagine I do not appreciate what you are doing for me because to-day I have not said much about it. Oh! how I wish you could always be with me! Having given Cambridge the slip, you’ll stay now, won’t you, as long as you possibly can?’

Deeply touched by his affection, I was about to assure him I would indeed remain while I was of any real service and comfort to him, when William—grown stout, sleek, but, as I thought, a good deal more trustworthy-looking—came forward with a packet on a salver.

‘What’s that?’ Hartover inquired sharply. ‘Put it down. I cannot be bothered with it now.’

‘I am sorry, my lord,’ the man answered, with evident unwillingness, ‘but I am bound to bring it to your notice. His lordship sent by express this morning from Bath. The messenger is waiting for your acknowledgment.’

Hartover’s hand grew heavy on my arm.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will send my orders presently.’

And he led me into a fine room, opening off the corridor on the left, where supper had been laid for us.

‘As I supposed,’ he went on, after glancing at the contents of the packet. ‘A summons from my father to attend his deathbed—in which last, by the way, I don’t for an instant believe. Brownlow, what am I to do?’

‘What but obey?’

‘To be told, when I get there, either that he has been miraculously restored to health, or that he has changed his mind; in either case that he no longer wishes to see me, and so—practically—have the door slammed in my face? No, I tell you these repeated visits to Bath become a farce, and an impertinent one at that. My father persistently sends for me and as persistently refuses to receive me when I come. Last time I swore, if he sent any more, he would send in vain. Why should I let him make me a laughing-stock, and treat me with less consideration than one of his own valets? Why cannot he be reasonably civil to me? It is intolerable, not to be borne. But his mind—such mind as he ever possessed, no great thing from the first as far as I can discover—has been poisoned against me for years by the gang of hypocrites and toadies which surrounds him. Only just now’—Hartover spread out his hands passionately, his face flushed, his eyes filling with tears—‘think, Brownlow, think how can I leave London? How can I endure the suspense of absence when—when’⸺

For a moment I feared he would give way to one of those fits of ungovernable anger before which I had trembled at Hover of old. But, to my great relief, he mastered himself, after a while growing gentle and composed.

‘You are right, dear old man, as usual,’ he said at last. ‘I will go. Then at least my conscience as a model son will be clear, whatever his lordship’s as a tender father may, or may not, be.’

And so it was settled he should start at cock-crow, leaving me to deal with the unlovely business of Mademoiselle Fédore—an arrangement I found far from unwelcome, since it secured me greater freedom of action than I could have hoped for otherwise.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Left to myself, next morning, I sought out Detective Inspector Lavender—a large, fair, pink-faced, grey-eyed man, with a soothing voice and fatherly smile, as unlike the human sleuth-hound of melodrama and fiction as could well be. Before making my fateful call upon Fédore it would be very desirable, I felt, to learn whether he had any fresh news for me and shape my course accordingly.

He greeted me with—

‘Well, sir, you are the gentleman of all others I was wishing to see. My fellow officers are a bit jealous sometimes of what they are pleased to call Lavender’s luck—and my luck is uncommonly to the fore, I must say, this morning.’

I inquired why.

‘Because this little man-hunting job of yours and mine seems on the tip of success. A word from you may settle it.’

I inquired how.

‘Well, sir, could you undertake to identify this Mr. Marsigli if you saw him?’

I answered that I believed I undoubtedly could.

‘Then the affair becomes very simple. Lavender’s luck, sir, Lavender’s luck. So, if you have an hour or two to spare, I will ask you to go with me to a certain humble residence, from the windows of which two of my men are keeping watch on a certain door, in a certain garden-wall, not very many miles from here.’

‘In Chelsea?’ I said—the question surprised out of me by his words, before I had time to consider the wisdom of asking it.

‘Just so, sir—in Chelsea—you’ve hit the right nail on the head.’ And, for all his soothing voice and fatherly smile, the detective’s grey eyes grew uncommonly keen and bright.

‘Pray may I ask, have you any particular interest in a door in a garden-wall giving access to a queerly stowed-away little house in a Chelsea side street?’

Clearly there was nothing for it but to put him in full possession of the facts; at the same time urging him to bear in mind the relation in which the inhabitant of that same queerly stowed-away dwelling stood, or was supposed to stand, to Lord Hartover.

He considered, for some minutes in silence, rubbing his hand slowly over his chin. Then—

‘This promises to be a more delicate piece of work than I expected. Either we must act together, fair and square and above-board, you understand, sir, without reserve on either side; or you must leave it all to me; or I must retire from the business, making the best case I can for myself to the authorities, and leave it all to you. It is a ticklish enough job either way. Now which shall it be, sir? The decision rests with you, since you are, in a sense, my employer; but I must ask you to make it at once, before I give you any further information. And please remember, sir, that while I am ready to do all in my power to meet your wishes and spare the young nobleman’s feelings, my first duty and first object is to bring the guilty party, or parties, to justice, whatsoever and whosoever they may be.’

It was my turn now to consider, since I could not but admit the soundness of his position. And I found myself, I own, in a dilemma. To leave all to Lavender appeared to me at once cowardly and somewhat lacking in good faith towards the dear boy; while to take the entire responsibility upon myself would be, I feared, both presumptuous and foolhardy.

‘No, we must work together, Inspector,’ I said, finally. ‘You may depend upon my loyalty; and I may, I am sure, depend upon your discretion, so long as the ends of justice are in no wise imperilled.’

‘Well said, sir,’ he replied. ‘I believe you will have no reason to regret your decision.’

And we proceeded to talk matters over thoroughly, he asking me again for a careful description of Marsigli.—Tall, of good figure and distinguished appearance, as I told him, a genuine North Italian type, crisp black hair, clear olive skin, and regular features; a serious and courtly manner, moreover.

Lavender consulted some notes.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘that tallies with the account of an individual my men have had under observation for the best part of a fortnight. Twice he has called at the house I spoke of. Our gentleman has added a neatly-grown moustache and beard to his other attractions, recently, as I fancy; but it will hardly prevent your recognising him—that is if Lavender’s luck holds, sir, and I can procure you a good look at him.’

Regarding my mission to Fédore—we agreed, since Hartover could not be back in town under a couple of days at soonest—it might very well stand over until to-morrow, and that meanwhile I should place my time entirely at my companion’s disposal.

‘If we have not laid hands on this fellow before midnight, you shall be free to follow your own wishes as to visiting the lady,’ he promised me; and therewith, calling a coach, bore me off south-westward to Chelsea.

The glorious summer weather of the past three or four days was about to terminate in the proverbial English thunder-storm. I seldom remember a more oppressive atmosphere. London still offers a not altogether satisfactory example of applied sanitary science, but, at the date in question, once you left the fashionable districts and main thoroughfares, was frankly malodorous, not to say filthy. Half-way along King’s Road Lavender paid off the coach, and conducted me, on foot, by festering, foul-smelling by-ways, to the back of a row of mean two-storied houses. Gaining access to one of them—which from its dilapidated condition I judged to be empty—through a yard strewn with all manner of unsightly rubbish, a dead cat included, we passed by a narrow passage and stairway to a front room on the first floor. Here two detectives awaited our coming, and here, seated on a remarkably comfortless Windsor chair, by the defaced and broken window I passed what appeared a small eternity, looking out into the ill-paved street, where groups of squalid, half-naked children played and fought, and hawkers plied a noisy, unremunerative trade.

Opposite was a long stretch of much-defiled drab brick wall, pierced by a green-painted door, and furnished with a fringe of broken bottle glass along the top, above which showed the upper branches of a plane-tree and the roof and chimney-pots of an otherwise invisible dwelling. The whole presented a sordid and disheartening picture in the close heavy heat, beneath a sullen grey-blue sky across which masses of heavy cloud stalked upright in the face of a fitful and gusty wind.

And to think this was the place to which Hartover—heir to immense wealth and princely possessions, heir to royal Hover affronting the grandeur of those wind-swept Yorkshire fells—must needs descend to seek comfort, companionship, and some ordinary human kindness of care and woman’s love! The irony, the cynicism, of it struck through me with indignation and disgust.

I am under the impression Lavender did his best to lighten the tedium of my vigil by talking, humorously and well, of matters pertaining to his profession. That he discoursed to me of the differences between English and Continental methods of criminal procedure—the former of which he held notably superior in dignity and in fair-play—while his underlings smoked their pipes in modest silence. But I am afraid I accorded his well-meant efforts for my entertainment scanty attention; nor even, when the storm broke, did I pay much heed to the long-drawn cannonade, the boom and crash of warring elements.

For, throughout that lengthy waiting, the thought of Hartover and of his future had grown to be a veritable obsession, dwarfing all else in my mind. Again his pathetic outcry over the ‘poor, poor, hateful little Chelsea house’—the roof and chimney-pots of which I could see there opposite, above the fringe of broken bottle glass topping the wall—rang in my ears. And, as it did so, Self, by God’s grace, at last, was mastered. Yes, it came to this—to all else would I give the go-by, readily, gladly—to my pleasant studious life at Cambridge and its prospect of solid emoluments, of personal distinction and scholarly renown, to my last lingering hope—for even yet a faint, sweet, foolish hope did linger—of some day making Nellie Braithwaite nearer, and ah! how vastly, exquisitely dearer than a mere friend—if thus I might be permitted to redeem Hartover, to save him from the consequences of his own wayward, though not ignoble, nature, and from the consequences of others’ wholly ignoble conspiracies and sins. I was ready to make my sacrifice without hesitation or return; only, in my weakness, I prayed for some assurance it was accepted, prayed for a sign.

Was the sign given? It seemed so. I sprang to my feet, calling Lavender hurriedly by name.

It was late afternoon now. The worst of the storm over, though big plashy drops still fell, while steam rose off the sun-baked paving-stones. Through this veil of moisture a man walked rapidly to the door in the wall and knocked. Waiting for his knock to be answered, he turned, took off his hat, shook it sharply to dislodge the wet, and, so doing, glanced up at the still lowering sky. I saw his face distinctly.

Lavender stood at my elbow.

‘Well, sir, well, sir?’ he said, an odd eagerness and vibration in his voice.

‘Yes,’ I declared. ‘Marsigli, Lord Longmoor’s former butler, without doubt.’

‘You would be prepared to swear to him in a court of law, if required?’

‘Absolutely prepared,’ I said.

Here the door was opened cautiously from the garden. Marsigli thrust past the servant, and disappeared within.

Now or never! Lavender and his underlings darted down the crazy stairs and across the road. I followed at my best pace, very vital excitement gripping me, in time to see him knock, await the opening of the door, and—then a rush. The three were inside so quickly that, before I could join them, the servant—a middle-aged, hard-featured, somewhat shrewish-looking French-woman—was safe in the custody of the younger detective, Lavender and the other pushing on for the house.

‘If she attempts to scream, throttle her,’ Lavender said, in a sufficiently loud aside to have a wholesomely restraining effect upon the captive. ‘Now, sir,’ to me, ‘as little noise as possible in getting upstairs, please.’

And he glanced meaningly, though not unkindly, at my lame leg.

I crept after them as quietly as I could, and had reason; for on reaching the landing we heard voices, a man’s and a woman’s, high in altercation.

The door of the front drawing-room, I should explain, stood open, the front room communicating with the back by folding doors. These were closed, and within them the quarrel took place; but so loudly that, as we advanced, I could distinguish nearly every word.

‘It is impossible. I tell you he is still away.’

‘No one else can have taken them. No one else has a key to this sweet little nest—and so the game is up, my child, by now the fraud discovered. You are trapped—trapped!’

‘Beast,’ the woman cried, in a tone of concentrated fury and contempt. ‘Go. Do you hear? I tell you to go, or I send Marie for the police.’

‘Pish, you little fool, you know you dare not. What money have you?’

‘Money, indeed! I have none, and if I had I would rather fling it in the gutter than you should have it. Go—go—are you deaf?’

‘Hand over the rest of the jewels then; or I call in the police myself, and tell them—you know what.’

‘It is a lie—a lie. I am his wife.’

‘Idiot—you are my wife, not his.’

‘You cannot prove it,’ she said fiercely.

‘I can. I have the documents safe in Paris.’

‘Go and fetch them, then.’

‘So I will, and take you and the jewels along with me. For I am willing to forgive—yes, listen—it is your only chance now that you are found out.—I, your lawful husband, Bartolomeo Marsigli, am willing to forgive, to condone your infidelities, and receive you back.’

‘And I spit upon your forgiveness. Understand, once and for all, I will never go back to you, never—I would die first. Having had the nobleman, what can I want with the nobleman’s valet? Keep off—you brute. Touch me at your peril. Take that—and that’⸺

The sound of a tussle. Then the man’s voice—

‘Heigh! my fine lady, would you bite then, would you scratch? There, be reasonable, can’t you, for I repeat the game is up. Your aristocratic boy-lover is lost to you for ever in any case. Come away with me to Paris while there still is time. I love you—and I will have you’⸺

Again the sound of a tussle, wordless, tense.

‘That will do, I think, sir,’ Lavender looked rather than spoke, and quietly opened the folding doors.

There are certain spots—in themselves often commonplace enough—which are branded, by mere association, indelibly upon the retina. So is that inner room on mine. I remember every stick of furniture it contained; remember even the colour and pattern of the wall-paper—a faded fawn dotted with tarnished gold and silver fleur-de-lis. The room—like every other back drawing-room in an unfashionable suburb of that day—was narrow, but high and of some length, a window, at the far end, opening down to the floor, a little balcony beyond, and the tops of a few fruit-trees in the garden below.

Across the window a couch had been drawn, upon which Fédore—wrapped in a loose dressing-gown of some pale silk stuff—had either been thrown or thrown herself in the heat of the recent struggle. On this side the couch, near the head of it, stood Marsigli, his back towards us.

Fédore’s nerve was admirable, her self-control consummate. Quick as thought she grasped the situation and used it to her own advantage. As she saw the doors open, disclosing our presence, she neither exclaimed nor shrank. On the contrary, drawing herself into a sitting position, she calmly extended one hand, with a proud sweeping gesture, and, as calmly, spoke.

‘Marie has done her duty then, faithful soul, without waiting to be told! There is the door, Marsigli, and there, behind you, are the police—and Mr. Brownlow, an old friend of mine too—how fortunate! Yes, arrest him, gentlemen; and hang him if you can—I do not understand your English laws—as high as St. Paul’s, for the most cowardly and insolent villain you ever took.’

Marsigli turned, saw us, and suddenly raised his right arm.

‘Die then, since you prefer it,’ he said. ‘Thief, liar—adulteress.’

While, with a terrible cry, Fédore leapt off the couch.

‘A knife!’ she screamed. ‘Save me. He has a knife.’

And, as she ran towards us, I saw something narrow and bright flash downwards between her shoulders, and—a red spout of blood. Her knees gave under her. She lurched, flung up her arms, kneeling for an instant bolt upright, a world of agony and despair in her splendid eyes, and then, before either of us could reach her, fell back.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Of the half-hour which followed I can give no coherent account. As I try to recall it, after the lapse of many years, details start into vivid relief, but without sequence or any clear relation of cause and effect.

I have an impression of helping Lavender to raise Fédore from the ground, and of his muttering—‘A foul blow, before God a foul blow,’ as we laid her, quivering but apparently unconscious, upon the couch. An impression of sultry, copper-coloured sunshine suddenly and harshly lighting up the disordered room, the grim assembly of men, and the woman’s pale recumbent figure, as with a glare of widespread conflagration. I have an impression of Marsigli, too, and that a very strange one, coolly holding out his hands—the right hand horribly splashed and stained—while Lavender clapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. The fury of primitive passion seemed assuaged in him by his hideous act of vengeance, and he had become impassive, courtly even in manner, as I remembered him when waiting on her Magnificence at table or ushering in her guests. He had given himself up, as I heard later, without any struggle or attempt at escape. But above all I have an impression, nauseating and to me indescribably dreadful, which—though I trust I am not unduly squeamish—I shall, I believe, carry with me to the day of my death, an impression of the sight, the sense, the smell of fresh shed blood. Upon that I will not dwell further, since, however deeply affecting to myself, it can serve no useful purpose.

Finally—summoned, I suppose, by the younger of Lavender’s underlings, who had reappeared after locking the servant, Marie, in some room below—a surgeon arrived. Then I slipped away downstairs and out into the comparatively cool untainted atmosphere of the shabby little garden. If I was wanted, they must call me. Not voluntarily could I witness a professional examination of what, less than an hour ago, had been a strong and very beautiful if very sinful woman, and was now but a helpless corpse.

All my thought had softened towards Fédore. Her evildoings—evil even in respect of her accomplice—were manifest. For, let us be just, Marsigli’s crime was not without provocation. But she had played for great stakes and had lost. The pathos of irremediable failure was upon her. And I was awe-stricken by the swiftness of her punishment, the relentless and appalling haste with which she had been thrust out of life. Into what uncharted regions of being had her astute, ambitious, and voluptuous spirit now passed? Regardless of the prohibitions of my Church, I prayed—and how earnestly!—her sins might be forgiven; and that through the Eternal Mercy—so far broader, deeper, more abiding, as I confidently believe, than any man-made definition of it—she might even yet find a place for repentance and peace at the last.

Under the plane-tree I found a rickety garden seat, on which, being now very tired, I was glad enough to rest.

How long I remained there in solitude—hearing the distant roar of London and a confused movement and noise of voices from the street, in which I judged a crowd had now gathered—I know not. But, finally, I beheld the stalwart form of Lavender, his hands clasped behind him and his head bent as in deep thought, coming up the wet garden path between the straggling row of little fruit-trees. His aspect struck me as depressed.

‘Well, sir,’ he said, when he reached me, ‘I think we have done all we can for to-night. I have disposed of Mr. Marsigli, and I and my men have been pretty thoroughly through the house. Some of what I take to be the stolen jewels are there, and a certain amount of plate; but no letters or papers that I can discover.’

He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

‘This is strictly between ourselves, sir,’ he went on, ‘you understand of course?’

I assured him I did.

‘Then I think I may say that in my opinion you can make your mind easy as to the existence of a previous marriage. You remember the conversation we overheard? Her answer, you may have observed, was not a denial of the fact but of the existence of proof—a very different story. However, if we fail to find proofs nearer home it will be simple to take a run over to Paris. We shall have no difficulty with the prisoner. It is in his interest to give all the information he can, and he is sharp enough to know that. A rum customer, though, as I have ever had to deal with—one minute a mad savage and the next close on a fine gentleman. Trying cattle these foreigners, always springing some trick on you! He’ll have to swing for her, I expect—still she must have led him a pretty lively dance. Something to be said on both sides, sir, as in my experience there usually is.’

Much of the above was welcome hearing; yet the detective’s aspect remained depressed. Again he wiped his face.

‘And now I dare say you’ll not be sorry to be moving, sir,’ he remarked.

Then as I rose, stiff and weary, and walked beside him along the garden path, the real source of his trouble was disclosed.

‘I feel I am bound to apologise, sir, for letting you in for so much unpleasantness. I blame myself; I was over-confident, and have got a well-deserved slap to my professional pride as the result.’

‘How so?’ I asked him.

‘Why, I delayed too long before opening those double doors in my eagerness to secure all the evidence I could—a mistake which might be excusable in a youngster, but not in one of my standing. The very secret of our business is to know the moment for action to a tick. I let them both get too worked up. And, worked up as they were, he being Italian, I ought to have foreseen the likelihood of that knife. No, sir, look at it what way I will, I am bound to blame myself. It is a discredit, in my opinion, and a grave one, for a man in my position to have a murder—and in broad daylight too—committed within three yards of his nose. The less said the better, I’m afraid, for some time to come, sir, about Lavender’s luck.’

I consoled the mortified and over-conscientious hunter of criminals and crime to the best of my ability; and then, thankfully bidding farewell to that blood-stained and tragic little house, pushed my way, with Lavender’s help, through the gaping and curious crowd in the street, and, bestowing myself in the coach one of his men had called for me, rumbled and jolted back to Grosvenor Square through the hot, thundery dusk.

(To be continued.)

WAR AND DIPLOMACY IN SHAKESPEARE.

An address given to the Ancoats Brotherhood, April 2, 1916.

BY SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, BART.

Being bidden to set down a subject for your entertainment, advised that it should have some relation to Shakespeare, and unable to distract my thoughts from war and the state of Europe for long together, I combined war, diplomacy, and Shakespeare at a venture; I had never considered Shakespeare’s work, as bearing on either of those topics, with any particular attention, and had no settled expectation of what might be the outcome.

In the result I confess that I am surprised, and, as that result is largely negative and therefore incapable of demonstrative proof, I do not feel much confidence that I shall be believed. When Shakespeare was growing up and beginning to know the world, both war and diplomacy were full of fresh matter for curiosity. Diplomacy, as we now understand it, was an invention of the Renaissance, and especially the Italian Renaissance, flourishing in an exuberant youth and wearing the ornaments of humanist learning not always free from pedantry, and humanist accomplishment often straying into over-ingenious conceits. The letters of Elizabethan statesmen and scholars, even on ordinary business, often conceal their real point from a modern’s first reading by their refined excess of caution. Here, it would seem, the comic Muse might find profitable matter, if only it came within her range of observation.

War, again, was ancient enough in itself, and so indeed were the fundamental rules of military art; but the outward face of war and the whole scheme of manœuvres, tactics, and fortification, had passed or were still passing through critical change due to the general use of fire-arms. Henry VIII.’s castles embodied the latest designs of Italian engineers, and English archery was already decaying though shooting at butts was still a matter of legal duty. Many details of armament and the like were in a state of transition, and came to rest only about the end of the seventeenth century, a rest which was little troubled for a century more. I need hardly remind you that Marlborough would have found very few novelties in Wellington’s army, save for such trifles as the cock of a hat, and the recognition—still not wholly without grudging—of gunners as being soldiers and not mere auxiliary artificers. Shakespeare found the art of war in such a swift new growth as was not to happen again till the times of which I can remember the beginning.

It would seem offhand, therefore, as if we ought to find, in the writing of so keen an observer as Shakespeare, considerable marks of these innovations, and some evidence of intelligent curiosity about their working: not so much, indeed, as would prove Shakespeare either an ambassador or a soldier, though I believe some ingenious persons have let their fancy go so far even as that. But in fact my search up and down the plays has led me to think that Shakespeare the playwright could do nothing with the modern diplomatic art, even if he had any knowledge of it, and that he never troubled himself much about the revolution in the art of war. Observe, I say Shakespeare the playwright. We have very little evidence of Shakespeare’s private pursuits and tastes outside the theatre, and for aught we know he may have been interested in matters for which the stage had no use, or which he did not choose to show there for other reasons. Observe also that beyond question the externals of both diplomacy and war figure in Shakespeare’s works, and those of war rather abundantly. You shall find passages of embassies and ambassadors, many fighting men, a fair number of fights on the stage, not counting brawls and private encounters, and plenty of talk about guns and gunpowder. Fire-arms might still have a smack of novelty at Stratford-on-Avon when William Shakespeare was a lad. And yet he thought them (if he thought at all) older than they were, for we read of cannon in ‘King John’ a century and more before they came into use, and about half a century before Roger Bacon made a cracker. As there is not a word about Magna Carta in ‘King John,’ nor in the older play on which Shakespeare worked, some persons may guess that ‘the troublesome raigne of John, King of England’ was a very dark age to Elizabethan playwrights. But for my part I would rather believe the omission to be a deliberate touch of dramatic fitness. John’s crimes and defaults could not be concealed; nevertheless he is exhibited as becoming at the last a champion of England against foreign encroachment, and it would have spoilt that effect to bring in his differences with the barons on constitutional points. It is true that the Great Charter had not yet become a popular rallying cry, but knowledge of its existence can hardly have been confined to antiquarian scholars. This, however, is not to the purpose here; and in truth the anachronism of the cannon is only a conspicuous example of a kind fairly common in Shakespeare. Thus King Henry V. is made to speak of the Grand Turk as holding Constantinople a full generation too soon.

To return to our theme, the treatment of public affairs and negotiation in Shakespeare is wholly subordinate to stage effect, the Elizabethan stage effect which depended largely on rhetorical set speeches in the more serious passages, and it is therefore rudimentary from a political point of view. Shakespeare knew the conceits of the fashionable epistolary style well enough, and could make sport with them. But when princes and their ministers discourse on affairs of state, contentiously or otherwise, we have no play of dialectic or development of argument. Every speaker gives his own view with little regard to conviction or reply, the matter being taken just as it came to hand in the chronicle or other authority relied upon, and the manner worked up more or less according to the importance of the scene and personages and the opportunity given by the situation. Recrimination is not uncommon, but there is no real critical discussion. Still less is there any indication of what Shakespeare himself thought of the merits. At the beginning of ‘Henry V.’ we find the King’s clerical advisers deliberately encouraging a foreign war of ambition to divert an attack on swollen church revenues,[1] and the Archbishop of Canterbury giving transparently bad reasons (as at this day they seem to us) for the English claim to the crown of France. There is no suggestion of anyone seeing anything wrong in such conduct; not that this is any ground for inferring that Shakespeare approved it. He followed his chronicle, here as elsewhere, mistakes and all.

Perhaps the nearest approach to a live negotiation on the stage is the conference of Hotspur, Glendower, and Mortimer over the map of England, already partitioned in their imagination, in the third act of ‘Henry IV.,’ Part I. The scene is admirably contrived to bring out Hotspur’s reckless ambition and Glendower’s pride, and for that very reason there is no scope for Italian subtilties. Hotspur blurts out his objection to the proposed boundary without reserve or preparation of any kind:—

Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,

In quantity equals not one of yours:

See how this river comes me cranking in,

And cuts me from the best of all my land

A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.

The course of the river, he says, must be changed to give a juster line.

After a short and heated bandying of words both Hotspur and Glendower suddenly think better of it. Glendower offers to yield:—

‘Come, you shall have Trent turn’d’

and Hotspur magnificently waives the whole quarrel:—

‘I do not care;

I’ll give thrice so much land to any well-deserving[2] friend;

But in the way of bargain, mark you me,

I’ll cavil to the ninth part of a hair.’

This is not a sample of diplomacy—nor would diplomatic art have been in place—but it is great play-writing which the mysterious dispensations of modern theatrical management compel us to enjoy only with the mind’s ear ‘in the closet,’ as our ancestors said. I have seen Phelps in Falstaff, but ‘Henry IV.’ does not keep the stage.

Outside the region of public affairs the intricate combinations of device and accident which formed the staple of the Italian novel were familiar enough to Shakespeare. They were plastic in his hands, assuming a farcical aspect in ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor,’ a purely comic one in the higher sense of comedy in Portia’s caskets and her secret expedition to Venice, and a serio-comic one in ‘Twelfth Night,’ though in spirit, as Mr. Masefield has finely observed, that is the most English of the great comedies; while in Iago the same instrument sounds the deepest of tragic notes. I do not count the catastrophe of Shylock in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ where all reason, justice, and probability are violated with a superb audacity that never fails to carry the spectator on a magic flood of illusion in even a passable performance. Therefore I see no need to set down Shakespeare’s eschewing of diplomacy to personal ignorance or indifference. It is true that he did not consort much with ambassadors or secretaries of state, neither were state papers accessible in print as they now are. But the very simplest explanation seems like to be the right one, that such material would not serve his turn. The game of diplomacy, being mostly played with pens and ink, and a leisurely game in those days, was not presentable to an audience. Exchange of dispatches and notes may make good reading for posterity, but is not good stuff for actors; and Shakespeare’s business was to produce acting stage-plays, which is an elementary truth forgotten by too many commentators.

Turn we then to the more bustling field of war. If anyone expects to find a general moral judgment about war in Shakespeare he will be disappointed. Shakespeare, like Justinian—a person to whom it would be hard to find any other resemblance in him—accepts war among the inevitable facts of life. Princes and nations fight, and arms are the natural profession of a gentleman. One of man’s seven ages, according to Jaques, is to be a soldier, ‘full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard’; and we are told that Bassanio was a soldier, seemingly because otherwise something would be lacking to him, for nothing turns on it. The reasons for making war, be they better or worse, are as a rule not too plainly bad to be plausible to the common understanding; a fair mark, it may be, for satirical quips, but that is not the main business. What really matters is that war must needs come in the dramatist’s way if he presents histories ancient or modern, and offers not only stirring incidents but precious occasions for developing every kind of character. Without the field of Shrewsbury we should not know Falstaff as we do know him; it gives us the exact measure of his braggadocio and the full wealth of the measureless ironical humour which he turns freely on himself, being resolved, since he may be no better than he is, to make himself out rather worse. He is the very contrary of that actual braggart who, having no humour, bragged sincerely and was a valiant man notwithstanding, Benvenuto Cellini.—One might fall to wondering what Shakespeare would have made of Benvenuto, had he ever heard of him; but the perpetual trouble with Shakespeare, as with the Oxford English Dictionary, is that at every turn one is tempted to stray and browse in by-ways.—Accordingly it was very well for a solemn Byzantine emperor, and his learned assessors who added the precepts of the Church to the Roman lawyers’ humane Stoic tradition, to deprecate war in set terms, along with slavery, as a lamentable departure from the ideal rule of natural reason, though in fact inveterate by the common custom of mankind: but a Renaissance playwright, who would be no dramatist without his share of unreasonable human nature, could hardly wish himself deprived of the material that war furnished him both for action and rhetoric. Such lines as

‘The royal banner and all quality,

Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war’

explain better than any commentary why the military pageant of history had a warm place in an Elizabethan actor-manager’s professional affections. Shakespeare would have liked to display it better. The Chorus in ‘Henry V.’ apologises for the ‘four or five most vile and ragged’—i.e. battered—‘foils’ which were the best the Globe Theatre’s armoury could produce for the campaign of Agincourt. Of that play there will be a word more to say anon.

Considering the need of rapid action on the Shakespearean stage, and its limited spectacular resources, it is obvious that actual warfare could be indicated only in a series of personal episodes, confining the visible symbols to a Homeric or at least a frankly medieval pattern. One might think, as far as the text went, that battles were decided by single combats; and probably those who begin to read Shakespeare young enough do think so. In ‘Henry V.’ we are told nothing of the military dispositions preceding the battle of Agincourt but the bare fact that a small and wearied English army was opposed by a larger and over-confident French one, and there is not one word about the English archery.[3] There is proof, however, though not too much, that Shakespeare had some notion of the offices of higher command in war, and could describe an episode of minor tactics not seen on the stage in a perfectly clear way. Yet it is noticeable that these proofs are not found in the historical plays. For the recognition of military science we have to go to the satirical romantic drama of ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ and for the business-like anecdote to the very late legendary play of ‘Cymbeline,’ which, for whatever reason, seems to pay less regard to stage effect than any other work of Shakespeare’s.

In the first act of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ the Greek chieftains, who conform only in the roughest way to their traditional characters, and quote Aristotle as if on purpose to show that the action has no relation even to accepted legend,[4] are discussing the state of affairs before Troy. Ulysses speaks of the discontented Ajax and his followers:—

‘They tax our policy and call it cowardice,

Count wisdom as no member of the war,

Forestall prescience and esteem no act

But that of hand: the still and mental parts

That do contrive how many hands shall strike

When fitness calls them on, and know by measure

Of their observant toil the enemies’ weight—

Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity:

They call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war;

So that the ram that batters down the wall,

For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,

They place before his hand that made the engine,

Or those that with the fineness of their souls

By reason guide his execution.’

We shall do no excess of violence to the difference of the times if we call this a staff officer’s view; and, all things considered, I think it goes near to be Shakespeare’s own, or at least that which he conceived to be the better opinion among those who had served in the wars of the Low Countries: as who should say ‘We can beat the Spaniard with any fair proportion of numbers, but you are not to think it is to be done without brains.’ Doubtless the opposite opinion, that of the rule-of-thumb soldier who thinks meanly of scientific warfare, made itself heard too, perhaps more loudly, at the Mermaid and elsewhere, and Shakespeare gives us a glimpse of it when Iago sneers at Michael Cassio as a great arithmetician who knows nothing of real fighting. But if Shakespeare had thought it sound he could have put it in a better mouth. The more familiar phrase of Mercutio’s dying speech: ‘a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic,’ is remote from this context as it belongs not to the art of war at large but to the contrast between the old English sword-play and the tricks of the new fangled Italian rapier: a topic which, I think, interested both Shakespeare and his audience more. In the same scene of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ we may find other military aphorisms: Nestor speaks of the uses of disappointment in war:—

‘In the reproof of chance

Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,

How many shallow bauble boats dare sail

Upon her patient breast, making their way

With those of nobler bulk—’

and he almost anticipates the doctrine, now proverbial, that victory is for the side that makes fewest mistakes:—

‘Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.’

There may just possibly be an allusion here to the ‘Islands Voyage’ and other poorly managed expeditions against the Spanish West Indies, then fairly recent.

Nestor has also a sharp word for Thersites the professional pessimist:—

‘A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint.’

We cannot all be as wise as Nestor; but we can at least refuse to lend our ears to Thersites.

In this connexion we may note some lines given to the Messenger at the opening of ‘King Henry VI.,’ which may have been touched by Shakespeare’s revising hand, though I would not vouch for it:—

‘Amongst the soldiers this is muttered,

That here you maintain several factions,

And while a field should be dispatch’d and fought,

You are disputing of your generals:

One would have lingering wars with little cost;

Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings;

A third[5] thinks, without expense at all,

By guileful fair words peace may be obtain’d.’

The first ‘faction,’ curiously enough, is not far from Queen Elizabeth’s own policy. The second falls pat for our very latest variety of politician, the ‘air service candidate,’ and the third for those who want to discuss terms of peace in detail before the enemy is beaten, except that in our time they are highly conscientious persons who would be shocked by any suggestion of guile.

Later in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ the Greek and Trojan leaders exchange elaborate compliments which savour more of the Middle Ages than the Renaissance; they have no military significance.

Before leaving ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ produced when the state of war with Spain was coming to an end, it may be observed that, so far as I know, direct mention of Spain as a hostile power does not occur anywhere in the plays.

In the last act of ‘Cymbeline’ we hear how the banished Belarius and the young princes who pass for his sons have rallied the Britons, flying from Roman invaders, at the head of a narrow lane, checked the pursuit, and led a successful counter-attack. The nature of the ground is explained with some detail:—

‘Where was this lane?

—Close by the battle, ditch’d, and wall’d with turf;

Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier,

An honest one, I warrant....’

The rest of the description, which is rather involved in style and may not have received the author’s last touches, adds nothing definite. The questioner, an unnamed ‘British lord,’ seems hardly to see the point:—

‘This was strange chance:

A narrow lane, an old man, and two boys.’

It is well attested by experience that a few determined men, or even one, may stop a panic if once they can get a rallying point; and I am much disposed to think that Shakespeare used in this passage an incident heard from someone who had actually seen it, or been very near it, ‘somewhere in Flanders.’

The most military of Shakespeare’s plays is ‘Henry V.’; there are other plays with much fighting in them, but neither within nor without the chronicle series is there one with so little of other interest in it. Henry V. is the only Shakespearean king who is a typical soldier, so much so that the type all but swallows up individual character. Mr. Masefield, who is always ingenious and often profound, thinks that Shakespeare did not admire the type; that he studied it with full knowledge and carefully framed the so-called heroic figure, a competent but no more than sufficiently competent leader, carrying on with fine animal spirits, unthinking, just and fair according to his lights, keen on playing the game as he knows it and scorning those who do otherwise with a scorn capable of being merciless, living by custom and not seeking ideas, never doubting that he is right—I am not using Mr. Masefield’s own words, but putting his judgment in a slightly less severe form; and then, Mr. Masefield will have it, Shakespeare holds up a piece of our own image to us in the jolly, obtuse soldier-king, with a whisper in his sleeve for the more knowing:—These be your gods, O Englishmen! I will not say there is nothing in Mr. Masefield’s point, but I cannot go all the way with him, the rather that if I am wrong it is in Sir Walter Raleigh’s company. Shakespeare’s command of human nature included other, richer, more complex, and more interesting characters; he knew very well that a prince always posing like Richard II., who is an accomplished cabotin, or always thinking like Hamlet, who fails not because he is weak but because he knows too much, would not have done Henry V.’s business; it does not follow that he thought ill of that business, and for my part I conceive that he admired Henry V. as the right man for his place and meant the audience to admire him. King Henry V.’s ostentatious repudiation of Prince Hal’s ways and companions is violent and awkward, and to a modern judgment unpleasant, as Mr. Masefield says. But that was forced on Shakespeare by the tale which he had to accept as history. Another difficulty is to see why a war of conquest against France should have been glorified on the stage at a time when France and England were not only at peace but in all but formal alliance against Spain: to which I see no answer except that chronicle plays were in fashion, a good play was a good play, and people did not go to the Globe to learn current European politics. We have not to consider whether Shakespeare thought Henry V. was in truth such a man as he put on the stage; or whether he did or did not stop to think that the real Henry V. must have known French quite well, if not as well as English, from his infancy; or other little puzzles that any observant reader may put, and get no certain answer, in this and most of the plays: for these things are not to our present purpose.

Shakespeare’s Henry V. is most human when he talks with his own soldiers as a plain gentleman, and they reason of the king’s responsibility in a thoroughly medieval fashion. The point is not whether a king who goes to war may have to reproach himself with the horrors of war as commonly understood, the temporal evils of death, destruction, and rapine. What is urged—and by a private soldier—is the risk that men slain in battle may die in mortal sin: ‘if these men do not die well.’ The king’s answer is a fine sample of Shakespeare’s grave prose dialogue, and, to the best of my belief, very sound moral theology. ‘Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.’ It is obvious that the principle is by no means confined to warlike enterprise. Did Shakespeare write this scene to justify the Archbishop of Canterbury’s praise, at the opening of the play, of Henry’s learning in divinity?

As for the usages of war, Henry V. accepts them as he finds them: that is, as Shakespeare—not to say Grotius—found them. When he summons Harfleur to surrender he is clear that the consequences of further resistance will be the governor’s fault and not his. Everybody is aware that a town taken by storm is pillaged; there is just a hint that no known discipline could prevent it; and indeed we moderns know what ado Wellington had in that matter little more than a century ago, and in a friendly country too. As a point of strict military rule, defence of an untenable position forfeited the defenders’ right to quarter down to the Peninsular War, and Wellington thought there was much to be said for it on the ground that the existence of the rule operated to prevent useless waste of life. This, however, is not explicit in Shakespeare.

Fluellen, the Welsh captain, is really a more distinct and human character than the king, though a minor one. He is a martinet, and probably would be a bore if he were allowed to expound the disciplines of the wars and the rules of Pompey’s camp at large; but he is a thoroughly good soldier, and a good friend. If it entered into Shakespeare’s plans to show off any knowledge of military science, here was a chance; the difference between the early fifteenth and the late sixteenth century would give no trouble, as in some details not worth particularising it certainly did not. We get nothing of this kind, however, from Fluellen beyond a few words about mines and countermines, which may be paralleled by the metaphorical use of the same matter in a still better known speech of Hamlet’s.[6]

Let us take leave of Henry V. with the remark that Shakespeare by his mouth anticipates Wellington’s policy and rebukes the Prussian devil’s gospel of frightfulness. ‘We give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentlest gamester is the soonest winner.’ And this is the Shakespeare whom the Germans pretend to understand better than his own countrymen.

It is curious that the longest string of military terms in Shakespeare, if I mistake not, is delivered by a woman, when Lady Percy tells Hotspur (I. ‘King Henry IV.’ ii. 3) that he has talked in his sleep

‘Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,

Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,

Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,

Of prisoners’ ransom, and of soldiers slain,

And all the currents of a heady fight.’

Some of the plays, like ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Coriolanus,’ are martial, inasmuch as there are combats and ‘excursions,’ but not military, inasmuch as the fighting is but the inducement or vehicle of some greater tragic event. Plutarch furnishes brave Roman sayings, or the politic sense of Elizabethan elders is condensed in aphoristic lines; but all this is secondary; what really concerns the poet is a spiritual conflict of eternal import, a soul triumphing though at the cost of life or wrecked. War and peace, conquest and exile, are the transitory matter the spirit works in, and Shakespeare troubles himself no more about the details than is needful for preserving a congruous atmosphere.

In Shakespeare’s time there was no English army in any proper sense, but only occasional levies. His illustration of English military method, such as it then was, is to be found in Falstaff’s immortal exploits as a recruiting officer. It is common knowledge that there was a very ancient tradition of compulsory service in time of war within the realm, but the operation of the principle was rough and inefficient. We may believe if we like that Falstaff knew his business when he chose; it is certain that the way he does choose is not only to be a corruptible and corrupt officer, but to sell exemptions shamelessly. By his own confession he ‘misused the king’s press damnably’ and ‘got in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers three hundred and odd pounds.’ If we consider him with a cold military eye—which is the last thing Shakespeare intended—it is clear that he deserved to be shot. We gather from the great recruiting scene in the third act of the second part of ‘King Henry IV.’ that officers chose their own subalterns and raised their own men with a pretty uncontrolled discretion. One would like to quote the whole scene, but paper is scarce, and it is better for the reader to enjoy it in the full text. Doubtless it is a caricature, but I would not wager any great odds on the exaggeration being gross. The impudence of taking ‘three pound to free Mouldy and Bullcalf’ and then magnifying the quality of the scarecrows who are left is as delightful as any of Shakespeare’s humours. ‘Care I for the limb, the thewes, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here’s Wart; you see what a ragged appearance it is.... O, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones. Put me a caliver[7] into Wart’s hand, Bardolph.... Come, manage me your caliver. So: very well: go to: very good, exceeding good. O, give me always a little, lean, old, chapt, bald shot....’ We may yet hear news of Falstaff in the trenches, for there be many pretty wits at the front.

There remains a question of which I have said nothing because it is too plain for discussion. Did Shakespeare think England worth fighting for? As to that, the answer is written all over his work; not only in such splendid passages as John of Gaunt utters in ‘Richard II.,’ which have quite properly been repeated many times, in print and on platforms, in the course of this year, but in the whole tone and colour of all his pictures of country life, whether the nominal scene be at Athens, or in the forest of Arden, or in Illyria. Besides, there are some questions really too impertinent to be put to any honest English gentleman, even when he is dead and immortalised these three hundred years.

FOOTNOTES

[1] There is apparently no real foundation for this; in fact there were serious commercial quarrels of some standing.

[2] One is much tempted to regard this epithet as inserted by some dull-pated player who did not see that in Hotspur’s eyes to be Hotspur’s friend would be desert enough without addition. The lines would then read, to the advantage of the metre:—

‘Glend. Come, you shall have Trent turn’d.

Hot. I do not care:

I’ll give thrice so much land to any friend.’

The metrical reason would be of little weight if it stood alone; still the irregularity of the verse as printed is particularly jarring, however one tries to arrange the lines.

[3] It is conspicuous in Drayton’s ‘The Battaile of Agincourt.’

[4] There were limits to Shakespeare’s carelessness, and I believe this enormous anachronism to be wilful.

[5] The insertion of ‘man’—actually made in the later folios—or ‘one’ is an obvious but not obviously necessary emendation.

[6] It may be irreverent to doubt whether Shakespeare knew or regarded the difference between a petard and a mine; yet it is certain that a petard was not fitted to hoist anything, but was a special contrivance for blowing in gates and the like. It was a novelty in the third quarter of the sixteenth century (Littré, s.v.). Drayton understood its use, but by a slip as bad as any of Shakespeare’s brought ‘the Engineer providing the Petar, to breake the strong Percullice’ into Henry V.’s war: ‘The Battaile of Agincourt,’ ed. Garnett, p. 22.

[7] A considerable anachronism, but these are trifles.

THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: THE REARGUARD.

BY BOYD CABLE.

All day long Papa Laval had been wandering about the streets of the little town, listening restlessly to the distant thunder of the guns, questioning eagerly the first of the fugitive peasantry who came streaming through in their flight towards safety. Papa Laval with his one arm and his cripple leg and his tales of ’70-’71 was naturally an authority on matters of war, and his fellow-townsmen listened deferentially to all he had to say about affairs. Papa was scornful of the first tales the fugitives told of a German victory and an Allies’ retreat; but the first rumble of heavy transport wagons through the cobbled streets in the middle of the night brought him quickly from his bed and down the narrow stairs to find out what it meant. He could learn nothing much because the transport drivers were English, could only take some comfort from the calm with which they steered through the crowded street, laughed and called jokes which none understood down to the staring townsfolk. But Papa had seen too much of war not to understand the meaning of the swelling tide of transport, to mark as the light grew the jaded horses and the sleep-worn looks of the drivers. His dismay grew when the khaki regiments began to flood through after the toiling transport, while out behind them the growling thunder of the guns rolled louder and louder.

And by noon he was in utter despair. The street through the town was by then choked from end to end with a seething mass of men and cattle and vehicles, military transport and ammunition wagons, soldiers, old peasant men and boys, women with children clutching their skirts or wailing in their arms, country carts piled with bedding and furniture, squealing pigs and squawking leg-tethered poultry, with huddled clinging old crones and round-eyed infants. And when Papa was told that the road was blocked in the same way for miles back, that the Germans were coming fast, that the whole army was retiring as fast as it could, he groaned in despair. He watched the slow torrent struggling and scrambling along the choked street, the impatience of the officers and dull apathy of the men in the marching regiments as they progressed a few yards and halted for the head of the column to clear a way; and he pictured to himself visions of a squadron of Uhlans swooping down on the crowded road back there and the havoc they would make in the packed masses under their lances.

About noon he found a new interest and fresh food for thought. A regiment arrived and, instead of pushing on through the town as the others had done, sought billets there and halted. Six men were billeted on Papa Laval, and between the smattering of broken French that one of them spoke and Papa’s equally broken English it was possible to hold some conversation and glean some understanding of the recent battle. But the men were too worn out, too dead beat, too utterly fatigued to talk much. They ate and drank and then flung themselves down to sleep, and all that Papa learned was that in truth a big battle had been fought, that the Germans had been held, but that for some reason the English were retreating. Fugitives from Maubeuge direction had told a similar tale of the retreat of the French, and Papa groaned again and wandered out into the street to curse impotently as he watched the struggling tide of fugitives that still poured with desperate slowness through the town. ‘Perhaps it would be better,’ he told his daughter at last and very reluctantly, ‘for you to go away while there is yet time. Not for yourself, but for the sake of the little ones. There will be fighting here, as I see it. This regiment remaining while all the others pass through means a rearguard action, an attempt to cover the retreat of the others. But that is a plan without hope. There is only a handful of men left to hold the town, and they are worn to the edge of exhaustion with marching and fighting. The Germans will attack in force, they will sweep through the town and take the bridge. That no doubt is the plan, and holding the town and the bridge they will sever the English army and the retreat will be a rout. Yes, my child, you had better go now.’

But the woman refused to go, to leave their little house, to drag her children out into the crowded roads on the way to nowhere; and after a little Papa gave up trying to persuade her.

It was a bare four hours after the weary men had found their billets when the alarm came that the enemy were coming. Papa shook his head as he watched the six men in his house rouse slowly and reluctantly, yawn and stretch and rub their eyes. ‘Four hours,’ he thought. ‘Of what use is a little four hours to men exhausted by battle and marching? If it had been eight hours’ sleep now, who knows—they say these English are good fighters, and they might have held the town a few hours. But four hours....’

The men themselves took it differently. ‘That shut-eye done me good,’ said one. ‘If I’d a decent wash now I’d be as good as ever.’

‘Glad we’re goin’ to ’old ’em up here,’ said another. ‘This retreatin’ game don’t suit me none. I’d sooner stop an’ fight it out.’

‘Dunno wot the blank we retreated for at all,’ grumbled a third. ‘They couldn’t ’ave pushed us out o’ that last position in a month.’

‘They do say the Frenchies on the right broke,’ said a corporal, the man with the smattering of French, ‘an’ we had to fall back ’cause they’d left our flank open. Fancy it must ha’ been something o’ that sort too.’

They were hastily buckling on their kits when Papa came in to them. ‘Cheer up, Daddy,’ they told him. ‘We’re not letting ’em come any further. But there’s goin’ to be a scrap here an’ you’d better keep your tuppenny tucked well in or you may get hurt by a stray lump o’ lead.’

‘Noos restey ici—compronney?’ said the corporal, and Papa nodded his understanding. ‘Mais not posseebl’ for to make victoire,’ he demurred. ‘Anglais ver’ few; Allemands plenty, ver’ plenty.’

‘Don’t you believe it, Daddy,’ said the corporal heartily. ‘Beaucoo Anglaise to stop—haltey les Allemong. You’ll see,’ and he got his men together and hurried off.

Papa had to admire the smart and business-like fashion in which the town was set in a state of defence, the houses commanding the roads loopholed, the street entrances blocked with barricades of transport wagons, the men distributed to the various vantage-points. But he had little or no hope of the result, because he saw how few the men were, how they had to be split up into small companies to cover all the many points which might be attacked. It was true that the defenders held the advantage of cover in the houses, but that would avail little against artillery; and the enemy had the advantage of being able to choose their point of attack and mass on it against the weakness of the distributed defence. Papa gave the defence half an hour at most to hold out after the real attack developed. As it happened, he was perfectly right in his surmise that a mere section of the defence would have to bear the full brunt of the attack, although he was quite wrong as to how long they could withstand it.

The attack came soon after the early darkness had fallen.

At first there was a quick rumour running round that a mistake had been made, that it was a French column that was approaching. It may have been this that deceived the defenders into allowing the enemy to come almost to hand-grips before the fighting began, and anyhow it is certain that the first sounds of conflict that Papa heard were not, as he had expected, a long-drawn rapid rifle fire, but one single and then a few scattered shots, shoutings, and the clash of steel on steel. For the moment it looked as if the first rush was to swamp the defence and break through it, since a seething mass of men fighting fiercely with butt and bayonet eddied slowly back and actually into the street of the town. Rifles began to blaze and bang from some of the upper windows, and then with a wild cheer a rush of khaki swept out from a side street and plunged into the fight. The fresh weight told, and although the defence was still outnumbered by two to one it was the stronger at close-quarter work, and the attack was driven slowly back and back until at last it broke and ran, leaving the street and the road about the outside of the town heaped with dead and wounded.