Not for some days after his fall from the window did Mr. Lavender begin to regain the elasticity of body necessary to the resumption of public life. He spent the hours profitably, however, in digesting the newspapers and storing ardour. On Tuesday morning, remembering that no proof of his interview had yet been sent him, and feeling that he ought not to neglect so important a matter, he set forth to the office of the great journal from which, in the occult fashion of the faithful, he was convinced the reporter had come. While he was asking for the editor in the stony entrance, a young man who was passing looked at him attentively and said: “Ah, sir, here you are! He's waiting for you. Come up, will you?”
Mr. Lavender followed up some stairs, greatly gratified at the thought that he was expected. The young man led him through one or two swing doors into an outer office, where a young woman was typing.
Mr. Lavender shook his head, and sat down on the edge of a green leather chair. The editor, resuming his seat, crossed his legs deferentially, and sinking his chin again on his chest, began:
“About your article. My only trouble, of course, is that I'm running that stunt on British prisoners—great success! You've seen it, I suppose?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Lavender; I read you every day.
The editor made a little movement which showed that he was flattered, and sinking his chin still further into his chest, resumed:
“It might run another week, or it might fall down to-morrow—you never can tell. But I'm getting lots of letters. Tremendous public interest.”
“Yes, yes,” assented Mr. Lavender, “it's most important.”
“Of course, we might run yours with it,” said the editor. “But I don't know; I think it'd kill the other. Still——”
“I shouldn't like——” began Mr. Lavender.
“I don't believe in giving them more than they want, you know,” resumed the editor. “I think I'll have my news editor in,” and he blew into a tube. “Send me Mr. Crackamup. This thing of yours is very important, sir. Suppose we began to run it on Thursday. Yes, I should think they'll be tired of British prisoners by then.”
“Don't let me,” began Mr. Lavender.
The editor's eye became unveiled for the Moment. “You'll be wanting to take it somewhere else if we——Quite! Well, I think we could run them together. See here, Mr. Crackamup”—Mr. Lavender saw a small man like Beethoven frowning from behind spectacles—“could we run this German prisoner stunt alongside the British, or d'you think it would kill it?”
Mr. Lavender almost rose from his chair in surprise. “Are you——” he said; “is it——”
The small man hiccoughed, and said in a raw voice:
“The letters are falling off.”
“Ah!” murmured the editor, “I thought we should be through by Thursday. We'll start this new stunt Thursday. Give it all prominence, Crackamup. It'll focus fury. All to the good—all to the good. Opinion's ripe.” Then for a moment he seemed to hesitate, and his chin sank back on his chest. “I don't know,” he murmured, “of course it may——”
“Please,” began Mr. Lavender, rising, while the small man hiccoughed again. The two motions seemed to determine the editor.
“That's all right, sir,” he said, rising also; “that's quite all right. We'll say Thursday, and risk it. Thursday, Crackamup.” And he held out his hand to Mr. Lavender. “Good morning, sir, good morning. Delighted to have seen you. You wouldn't put your name to it? Well, well, it doesn't matter; only you could have written it. The turn of phrase—immense! They'll tumble all right!” And Mr. Lavender found himself, with Mr. Crackamup, in the lobby. “It's bewildering,” he thought, “how quickly he settled that. And yet he had such repose. But is there some mistake?” He was about to ask his companion, but with a distant hiccough the small man had vanished. Thus deserted, Mr. Lavender was in two minds whether to ask to be readmitted, when the four gentlemen with notebooks repassed him in single file into the editor's room.
“My name is Lavender,” he said resolutely to the young woman. “Is that all right?”
“Quite,” she answered, without looking up.
Mr. Lavender went out slowly, thinking, “I may perhaps have said more in that interview than I remember. Next time I really will insist on having a proof. Or have they taken me for some other public man?” This notion was so disagreeable, however, that he dismissed it, and passed into the street.
On Thursday, the day fixed for his fresh tour of public speaking, he opened the great journal eagerly. Above the third column was the headline: OUR VITAL DUTY: BY A GREAT PUBLIC MAN. “That must be it,” he thought. The article, which occupied just a column of precious space, began with an appeal so moving that before he had read twenty lines Mr. Lavender had identified himself completely with the writer; and if anyone had told him that he had not uttered these sentiments, he would have given him the lie direct. Working from heat to heat the article finished in a glorious outburst with a passionate appeal to the country to starve all German prisoners.
Mr. Lavender put it down in a glow of exultation. “I shall translate words into action,” he thought; “I shall at once visit a rural district where German prisoners are working on the land, and see that the farmers do their duty.” And, forgetting in his excitement to eat his breakfast, he put the journal in his pocket, wrapped himself in his dust-coat and broad-brimmed hat, and went out to his car, which was drawn up, with Blink, who had not forgotten her last experience, inside.
“We will go to a rural district, Joe,” he said, getting in.
“Very good, sir,” answered Joe; and, unnoticed by the population, they glided into the hazy heat of the June morning.
“Well, what abaht it, sir?” said Joe, after they had proceeded for some three hours. “Here we are.”
Mr. Lavender, who had been lost in the beauty of the scenes through which he was passing, awoke from reverie, and said:
“I am looking for German prisoners, Joe; if you see a farmer, you might stop.”
“Any sort of farmer?” asked Joe.
“Is there more than one sort?” returned Mr. Lavender, smiling.
Joe cocked his eye. “Ain't you never lived in the country, sir?”
“Not for more than a few weeks at a time, Joe, unless Rochester counts. Of course, I know Eastbourne very well.”
“I know Eastbourne from the inside,” said Joe discursively. “I was a waiter there once.”
“An interesting life, a waiter's, Joe, I should think.”
“Ah! Everything comes to 'im who waits, they say. But abaht farmers—you've got a lot to learn, sir.”
“I am always conscious of that, Joe; the ramifications of public life are innumerable.”
“I could give you some rummikins abaht farmers. I once travelled in breeches.”
“You seem to have done a great many things Joe.”
“That's right, sir. I've been a sailor, a 'traveller,' a waiter, a scene-shifter, and a shover, and I don't know which was the cushiest job. But, talking of farmers: there's the old English type that wears Bedfords—don't you go near 'im, 'e bites. There's the modern scientific farmer, but it'll take us a week to find 'im. And there's the small-'older, wearin' trahsers, likely as not; I don't think 'e'd be any use to you.
“What am I to do then?” asked Mr Lavender.
“Ah!” said Joe, “'ave lunch.”
Mr. Lavender sighed, his hunger quarelling with his sense of duty. “I should like to have found a farmer first,” he said.
“Well, sir, I'll drive up to that clump o'beeches, and you can have a look round for one while I get lunch ready.
“That will do admirably.”
“There's just one thing, sir,” said Joe, when his master was about to start; “don't you take any house you come across for a farm. They're mostly cottages o' gentility nowadays, in'abited by lunatics.”
“I shall be very careful,” said Mr. Lavender.
“This glorious land!” he thought, walking away from the beech clump, with Blink at his heels; “how wonderful to see it being restored to its former fertility under pressure of the war! The farmer must be a happy man, indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of his own prosperity. How flowery those beans look already!” he mused, glancing at a field of potatoes. “Now that I am here I shall be able to combine my work on German prisoners with an effort to stimulate food production. Blink!” For Blink was lingering in a gateway. Moving back to her, Mr. Lavender saw that the sagacious animal was staring through the gate at a farmer who was standing in a field perfectly still, with his back turned, about thirty yards away.
“Have you——” Mr. Lavender began eagerly; “is it—are you employing any German prisoners, sir?”
The farmer did not seem to hear. “He must,” thought Mr. Lavender, “be of the old stolid English variety.”
The farmer, who was indeed attired in a bowler hat and Bedford cords, continued to gaze over his land, unconscious of Mr. Lavender's presence.
“I am asking you a question, sir,” resumed the latter in a louder voice. “And however patriotically absorbed you may be in cultivating your soil, there is no necessity for rudeness.”
The farmer did not move a muscle.
“Sir,” began Mr. Lavender again, very patiently, “though I have always heard that the British farmer is of all men least amenable to influence and new ideas, I have never believed it, and I am persuaded that if you will but listen I shall be able to alter your whole outlook about the agricultural future of this country.” For it had suddenly occurred to him that it might be a long time before he had again such an opportunity of addressing a rural audience on the growth of food, and he was loth to throw away the chance. The farmer, however, continued to stand with his hack to the speaker, paying no more heed to his voice than to the buzzing of a fly.
“You SHALL hear me,” cried Mr. Lavender, unconsciously miming a voice from the past, and catching, as he thought, the sound of a titter, he flung his hand out, and exclaimed:
“Grass, gentlemen, grass is the hub of the matter. We have put our hand to the plough”—and, his imagination taking flight at those words, he went on in a voice calculated to reach the great assembly of farmers which he now saw before him with their backs turned—“and never shall we take it away till we have reduced every acre in the country to an arable condition. In the future not only must we feed ourselves, but our dogs, our horses, and our children, and restore the land to its pristine glory in the front rank of the world's premier industry. But me no buts,” he went on with a winning smile, remembering that geniality is essential in addressing a country audience, “and butter me no butter, for in future we shall require to grow our margarine as well. Let us, in a word, put behind us all prejudice and pusillanimity till we see this country of ours once more blooming like one great cornfield, covered with cows. Sirs, I am no iconoclast; let us do all this without departing in any way from those great principles of Free Trade, Industrialism, and Individual Liberty which have made our towns the largest, most crowded, and wealthiest under that sun which never sets over the British Empire. We do but need to see this great problem steadily and to see it whole, and we shall achieve this revolution in our national life without the sacrifice of a single principle or a single penny. Believe me, gentlemen, we shall yet eat our cake and have it.”
Mr. Lavender paused for breath, the headlines of his great speech in tomorrow's paper dancing before his eyes: “THE CLIMACTERIC—EATS CAKE AND HAS IT—A GREAT CONCLUSION.” The wind, which had risen somewhat during Mr. Lavender's speech, fluttered the farmer's garments at this moment, so that they emitted a sound like the stir which runs through an audience at a moment of strong emotion.
“Ah!” cried Mr. Lavender, “I see that I move you, gentlemen. Those have traduced you who call you unimpressionable. After all, are you not the backbone of this country up which runs the marrow which feeds the brain; and shall you not respond to an appeal at once so simple and so fundamental? I assure you, gentlemen, it needs no thought; indeed, the less you think about it the better, for to do so will but weaken your purpose and distract your attention. Your duty is to go forward with stout hearts, firm steps, and kindling eyes; in this way alone shall we defeat our common enemies. And at those words, which he had uttered at the top of his voice, Mr. Lavender stood like a clock which has run down, rubbing his eyes. For Blink, roaming the field during the speech, and encountering quadruped called rabbit, which she had never seen before, had backed away from it in dismay, brushed against the farmer's legs and caused his breeches to fall down, revealing the sticks on which they had been draped. When Mr. Lavender saw this he called out in a loud voice Sir, you have deceived me. I took you for a human being. I now perceive that you are but a selfish automaton, rooted to your own business, without a particle of patriotic sense. Farewell!”
After parting with the scarecrow Mr. Lavender who felt uncommonly hungry' was about to despair of finding any German prisoners when he saw before him a gravel-pit, and three men working therein. Clad in dungaree, and very dusty, they had a cast of countenance so unmistakably Teutonic that Mr. Lavender stood still. They paid little or no attention to him, however, but went on sadly and silently with their work, which was that of sifting gravel. Mr. Lavender sat down on a milestone opposite, and his heart contracted within him. “They look very thin and sad,” he thought, “I should not like to be a prisoner myself far from my country, in the midst of a hostile population, without a woman or a dog to throw me a wag of the tail. Poor men! For though it is necessary to hate the Germans, it seems impossible to forget that we are all human beings. This is weakness,” he added to himself, “which no editor would tolerate for a moment. I must fight against it if I am to fulfil my duty of rousing the population to the task of starving them. How hungry they look already—their checks are hollow! I must be firm. Perhaps they have wives and families at home, thinking of them at this moment. But, after all, they are Huns. What did the great writer say? 'Vermin—creatures no more worthy of pity than the tiger or the rat.' How true! And yet—Blink!” For his dog, seated on her haunches, was looking at him with that peculiarly steady gaze which betokened in her the desire for food. “Yes,” mused Mr. Lavender, “pity is the mark of the weak man. It is a vice which was at one time rampant in this country; the war has made one beneficial change at least—we are moving more and more towards the manly and unforgiving vigour of the tiger and the rat. To be brutal! This is the one lesson that the Germans can teach us, for we had almost forgotten the art. What danger we were in! Thank God, we have past masters again among us now!” A frown became fixed between his brows. “Yes, indeed, past masters. How I venerate those good journalists and all the great crowd of witnesses who have dominated the mortal weakness, pity. 'The Hun must and shall be destroyed—root and branch—hip and thigh—bag and baggage man, woman, and babe—this is the sole duty of the great and humane British people. Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, roll up! Great thought—great language! And yet——”
Here Mr. Lavender broke into a gentle sweat, while the Germans went on sifting gravel in front of him, and Blink continued to look up into his face with her fixed, lustrous eyes. “What an awful thing,” he thought, “to be a man. If only I were just a public man and could, as they do, leave out the human and individual side of everything, how simple it would be! It is the being a man as well which is so troublesome. A man has feelings; it is wrong—wrong! There should be no connection whatever between public duty and the feelings of a man. One ought to be able to starve one's enemy without a quiver, to watch him drown without a wink. In fact, one ought to be a German. We ought all to be Germans. Blink, we ought all to be Germans, dear! I must steel myself!” And Mr. Lavender wiped his forehead, for, though a great idea had come to him, he still lacked the heroic savagery to put it into execution. “It is my duty,” he thought, “to cause those hungry, sad-looking men to follow me and watch me eat my lunch. It is my duty. God give me strength! For unless I make this sacrifice of my gentler nature I shall be unworthy to call myself a public man, or to be reported in the newspapers. 'En avant, de Bracy!'” So musing, he rose, and Blink with him. Crossing the road, he clenched his fists, and said in a voice which anguish made somewhat shrill:
“Are you hungry, my friends?”
The Germans stopped sifting gravel, looked up at him, and one of them nodded.
“And thirsty?”
This time they all three nodded.
“Come on, then,” said Mr. Lavender.
And he led the way back along the road, followed by Blink and the three Germans. Arriving at the beech clump whose great trees were already throwing shadows, denoting that it was long past noon, Mr. Lavender saw that Joe had spread food on the smooth ground, and was, indeed, just finishing his own repast.
“What is there to eat?” thought Mr. Lavender, with a soft of horror. “For I feel as if I were about to devour a meal of human flesh.” And he looked round at the three Germans slouching up shamefacedly behind him.
“Sit down, please,” he said. The three men sat down.
“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender to his surprised chauffeur, “serve my lunch. Give me a large helping, and a glass of ale.” And, paler than his holland dust-coat, he sat resolutely down on the bole of a beech, with Blink on her haunches beside him. While Joe was filling a plate with pigeon-pie and pouring out a glass of foaming Bass, Mr. Lavender stared at the three Germans and suffered the tortures of the damned. “I will not flinch,” he thought; “God helping me, I certainly will not flinch. Nothing shall prevent my going through with it.” And his eyes, more prominent than a hunted rabbit's, watched the approach of Joe with the plate and glass. The three men also followed the movements of the chauffeur, and it seemed to Mr. Lavender that their eyes were watering. “Courage!” he murmured to himself, transfixing a succulent morsel with his fork and conveying it to his lips. For fully a minute he revolved the tasty mouthful, which he could not swallow, while the three men's eyes watched him with a sort of lugubrious surprise. “If,” he thought with anguish, “if I were a prisoner in Germany! Come, come! One effort, it's only the first mouthful!” and with a superhuman effort, he swallowed. “Look at me!” he cried to the three Germans, “look at me! I—I—I'm going to be sick!” and putting down his plate, he rose and staggered forward. “Joe,” he said in a dying voice, “feed these poor men, feed them; make them drink; feed them!” And rushing headlong to the edge of the grove, he returned what he had swallowed—to the great interest of Brink. Then, waving away the approach of Joe, and consumed with shame and remorse at his lack of heroism, he ran and hid himself in a clump of hazel bushes, trying to slink into the earth. “No,” he thought; “no; I am not for public life. I have failed at the first test. Was ever so squeamish an exhibition? I have betrayed my country and the honour of public life. These Germans are now full of beer and pigeon-pie. What am I but a poltroon, unworthy to lace the shoes of the great leaders of my land? The sun has witnessed my disgrace.”
How long he stayed there lying on his face he did not know before he heard the voice of Joe saying, “Wot oh, sir!”
“Joe,” replied Mr. Lavender faintly, “my body is here, but my spirit has departed.”
“Ah!” said Joe, “a rum upset—that there. Swig this down, sir!” and he held out to his master, a flask-cup filled with brandy. Mr. Lavender swallowed it.
“Have they gone?” he said, gasping.
“They 'ave, sir,” replied Joe, “and not 'alf full neither. Where did you pick 'em up?”
“In a gravel-pit,” said Mr. Lavender. “I can never forgive myself for this betrayal of my King and country. I have fed three Germans. Leave me, for I am not fit to mingle with my fellows.”
“Well, I don't think,” said Joe. “Germans?”
Gazing up into his face Mr. Lavender read the unmistakable signs of uncontrolled surprise.
“Why do you look at me like that?” he said.
“Germans?” repeated Joe; “what Germans? Three blighters workin' on the road, as English as you or me. Wot are you talkin' about, sir?”
“What!” cried Mr. Lavender, “do you tell me they were not Germans?”
“Well, their names was Tompkins, 'Obson, and Brown, and they 'adn't an 'aitch in their 'eads.”
“God be praised!” said Mr. Lavender. “I am, then, still an English gentleman. Joe, I am very hungry; is there nothing left?”
“Nothin' whatever, sir,” replied Joe.
“Then take me home,” said Mr. Lavender; “I care not, for my spirit has come back to me.”
So saying, he rose, and supported by Joe, made his way towards the car, praising God in his heart that he had not disgraced his country.
“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, when they had proceeded some twenty miles along the road for home, “my hunger is excessive. If we come across an hotel, Joe, pull up.”
“Right-o, sir,” returned Joe. “'Otels, ain't what they were, but we'll find something. I've got your coupons.”
Mr. Lavender, who was seated beside his chauffeur on the driving-seat, while Blink occupied in solitude the body of the car, was silent for a minute, revolving a philosophic thought.
“Do you find,” he said suddenly, “that compulsory sacrifice is doing you good, Joe?”
“It's good for my thirst, sir,” replied Joe. “Never was so powerful thirsty in me life as I've been since they watered beer. There's just 'enough in it to tickle you. That bottle o' Bass you would 'ave 'ad at lunch is the last of the old stock at 'ome, sir; an' the sight of it fair gave me the wind up. To think those blighters 'ad it! Wish I'd known they was Germans—I wouldn't 'ave weakened on it.”
“Do not, I beg,” said Mr. Lavender, “remind me of that episode. I sometimes think,” he went on as dreamily as his hunger would permit, “that being forced to deprive oneself awakens one's worst passions; that is, of course, speaking rather as a man than a public man. What do you think will happen, Joe, when we are no longer obliged to sacrifice ourselves?
“Do wot we've been doin all along—sacrifice someone else,” said Joe lightly.
“Be serious, Joe,” said Mr. Lavender.
“Well,” returned Joe, “I don't know what'll 'appen to you, sir, but I shall go on the bust permanent.”
Mr. Lavender sighed. “I do so wonder whether I shall, too,” he said.
Joe looked round at him, and a gleam of compassion twinkled in his greenish eyes. “Don't you worry, sir,” he said; “it's a question of constitootion. A week'd sew you up.”
“A week!” said Mr. Lavender with watering lips, “I trust I may not forget myself so long as that. Public men do not go 'on the bust,' Joe, as you put it.”
“Be careful, sir! I can't drive with one eye.”
“How can they, indeed?” went on Mr. Lavender; “they are like athletes, ever in training for their unending conflict with the national life.”
“Well,” answered Joe indulgently, “they 'as their own kind of intoxication, too—that's true; and the fumes is permanent; they're gassed all the time, and chloroformed the rest.
“I don't know to what you allude, Joe,” said Mr. Lavender severely.
“'Aven't you never noticed, sir, that there's two worlds—the world as it is, and the world as it seems to the public man?”
“That may be,” said Mr. Lavender with some excitement. “But which is the greater, which is the nobler, Joe? And what does the other matter? Surely that which flourishes in great minds, and by their utterances is made plain. Is it not better to live in a world where nobody shrinks from being starved or killed so long as they can die for their kings and countries, rather than in a world where people merely wish to live?”
“Ah!” said Joe, “we're all ready to die for our countries if we've got to. But we don't look on it, like the public speakers, as a picnic. They're a bit too light-'earted.”
“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, covering his ears, and instantly uncovering them again, “this is the most horrible blasphemy I have ever listened to.”
“I can do better than that, sir,” answered Joe. “Shall I get on with it?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, clenching his hands, “a public man shrinks from nothing—not even from the gibes of his enemies.”
“Well, wot abaht it, sir? Look at the things they say, and at what really is. Mind you, I'm not speakin' particular of the public men in this country—or any other country; I'm speakin' of the lot of 'em in every country. They're a sort of secret society, brought up on gas. And every now and then someone sets a match to it, and we get it in the neck. Look 'ere, sir. Dahn squats one on his backside an' writes something in 'igh words. Up pops another and says something in 'igher; an' so they go on poppin' up an' squattin' dahn till you get an atmosphere where you can't breathe; and all the time all we want is to be let alone, and 'uman kindness do the rest. All these fellers 'ave got two weaknesses—one's ideas, and the other's their own importance. They've got to be conspicuous, and without ideas they can't, so it's a vicious circle. When I see a man bein' conspicuous, I says to meself: 'Gawd 'elp us, we shall want it!' And sooner or later we always do. I'll tell you what's the curse of the world, sir; it's the gift of expressin' what ain't your real feeling. And—Lord! what a lot of us 'ave got it!”
“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were almost starting from his head, “your words are the knell of poetry, philosophy, and prose—especially of prose. They are the grave of history, which, as you know, is made up of the wars and intrigues which have originated in the brains of public men. If your sordid views were true, how do you suppose for one minute that in this great epic struggle we could be consoled by the thought that we are 'making history'? Has there been a single utterance of any note which has not poured the balm of those words into our ears? Think how they have sustained the widow and the orphan, and the wounded lying out in agony under the stars. 'To make history,' 'to act out the great drama'—that thought, ever kept before us, has been our comfort and their stay. And you would take it from us? Shame—shame!” repeated Mr. Lavender. “You would destroy all glamour, and be the death of every principle.”
“Give me facts,” said Joe stubbornly, “an' you may 'ave my principles. As to the other thing, I don't know what it is, but you may 'ave it, too. And 'ere's another thing, sir: haven't you never noticed that when a public man blows off and says something, it does 'im in? No matter what 'appens afterwards, he's got to stick to it or look a fool.”
“I certainly have not,” said Mr. Lavender. “I have never, or very seldom, noticed that narrowness in public men, nor have I ever seen them 'looking fools' as you rudely put it.”
“Where are your eyes, sir?” answered Joe; “where are your eyes? I give you my word it's one or the other, though I admit they've brought camouflage to an 'igh art. But, speaking soberly, sir, if that's possible, public men are a good thing' and you can 'ave too much of it. But you began it, sir,” he added soothingly, “and 'ere's your hotel. You'll feel better with something inside you.”
So saying, he brought the car to a standstill before a sign which bore the words, “Royal Goat.”
Mr. Lavender, deep sunk in the whirlpool of feeling which had been stirred in him by his chauffeur's cynicism, gazed at the square redbrick building with bewildered eyes.
“It's quite O. K.,” said Joe; “I used to call here regular when I was travellin' in breeches. Where the commercials are gathered together the tap is good,” he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose. “And they've a fine brand of pickles. Here's your coupon.”
Thus encouraged, Mr. Lavender descended from the car, and, accompanied by Blink, entered the hotel and sought the coffee-room.
A maid of robust and comely appearance, with a fine free eye, divested him of his overcoat and the coupon, and pointed to a table and a pale and intellectual-looking young man in spectacles who was eating.
“Have you any more beef?” said the latter without looking up.
“No, sir,” replied the maid.
“Then bring me the ham and eggs,” he added.
“Here's another coupon—and anything else you've got.”
Mr. Lavender, whose pangs had leaped in him at the word “beef,” gazed at the bare bone of the beef-joint, and sighed.
“I, too, will have some ham and a couple of poached eggs,” he said.
“You can have ham, sir,” replied the maid, “but there are only eggs enough for one.”
“And I am the one,” said the young man, looking up for the first time.
Mr. Lavender at once conceived an aversion from him; his appearance was unhealthy, and his eyes ravened from behind the spectacles beneath his high forehead.
“I have no wish to deprive you of your eggs, sir,” he said, “though I have had nothing to eat all day.”
“I have had nothing to eat to speak of for six months,” replied the young man, “and in a fortnight's time I shall have nothing to eat again for two years.”
Mr. Lavender, who habitually spoke, the truth, looked at him with a sort of horror. But the young man had again concentrated his attention on his plate. “How deceptive are appearances,” thought Mr. Lavender; “one would say an intellectual, not to say a spiritual type, and yet he eats like a savage, and lies like a trooper!” And the pinchings of his hunger again attacking him, he said rather acidly:
May I ask you, sir, whether you consider it amusing to tell such untruths to a stranger?
The young man, who had finished what was on his plate, paused, and with a faint smile said:
“I spoke figuratively. You, sir, I expect, have never been in prison.”
At the word 'prison' Mr. Lavender's natural kindliness reasserted itself at once. “Forgive me,” he said gently; “please eat all the ham. I can easily do with bread and cheese. I am extremely sorry you have had that misfortune, and would on no account do anything which might encourage you to incur it again. If it is a question of money or anything of that sort,” he went on timidly, “please command me. I abhor prisons; I consider them inhuman; people should only be confined upon their honours.”
The young man's eyes kindled behind his spectacles.
“I have been confined,” he said, “not upon my honour, but because of my honour; to break it in.”
“How is that?” cried Mr. Lavender, aghast, “to break it in?”
“Yes,” said the young man, cutting a large slice of bread, “there's no other way of putting it with truth. They want me to go back on my word to go back on my faith, and I won't. In a fortnight's time they'll gaol me again, so I MUST eat—excuse me. I shall want all my strength.” And he filled his mouth too full to go on speaking.
Mr. Lavender stared at him, greatly perturbed.
“How unjustly I judged him,” he thought; and seeing that the maid had placed the end of a ham before him he began carving off what little there was left on it, and, filling a plate, placed it before the young man. The latter thanked him, and without looking up ate rapidly on. Mr. Lavender watched him with beaming eyes. “It's lovely to see him!” he thought; “poor fellow!”
“Where are the eggs?” said the young man suddenly.
Mr. Lavender got up and rang the bell.
“Please bring those eggs for him,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said the maid. “And what are you going to have? There's nothing in the house now.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Lavender, startled. “A cup of coffee and a slice of bread, thank you. I can always eat at any time.”
The maid went away muttering to herself, and bringing the eggs, plumped them down before the young man, who ate them more hastily than words could tell.
“I mean,” he said, “to do all I can in this fort-night to build up my strength. I shall eat almost continuously. They shall never break me.” And, reaching out, he took the remainder of the loaf.
Mr. Lavender watched it disappear with a certain irritation which he subdued at once. “How selfish of me,” he thought, “even to think of eating while this young hero is still hungry.”
“Are you, then,” he said, “the victim of some religious or political plot?”
“Both,” replied the young man, leaning back with a sigh of repletion, and wiping his mouth. “I was released to-day, and, as I said, I shall be court-martialled again to-day fortnight. It'll be two years this time. But they can't break me.”
Mr. Lavender gasped, for at the word “courtmartialled” a dreadful doubt had assailed him.
“Are you,” he stammered—“you are not—you cannot be a Conscientious Objector?”
“I can,” said the young man.
Mr. Lavender half rose in horror.
“I don't approve,” he ejaculated; “I do not approve of you.”
“Of course not,” said the young man with a little smile at once proud and sad, “who does? If you did I shouldn't have to eat like this, nor should I have the consciousness of spiritual loneliness to sustain me. You look on me as a moral outcast, as a leper. That is my comfort and my strength. For though I have a genuine abhorrence of war, I know full well that I could not stick this if it were not for the feeling that I must not and will not lower myself to the level of mere opportunists like you, and sink myself in the herd of men in the street.”
At hearing himself thus described Mr. Lavender flushed.
“I yield to no one,” he said, “in my admiration of principle. It is because of my principles that I regard you as a——”
“Shirker,” put in the young man calmly. “Go on; don't mince words; we're used to them.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, kindling, “a shirker. Excuse me! A renegade from the camp of Liberty, a deserter from the ranks of Humanity, if you will pardon me.”
“Say a Christian, and have done with it,” said the young man.
“No,” said Mr. Lavender, who had risen to his feet, “I will not go so far as that. You are not a Christian, you are a Pharisee. I abhor you.”
“And I abhor you,” said the young man suddenly. “I am a Christian Socialist, but I refuse to consider you my brother. And I can tell you this: Some day when through our struggle the triumph of Christian Socialism and of Peace is assured, we shall see that you firebrands and jingoes get no chance to put up your noxious heads and disturb the brotherhood of the world. We shall stamp you out. We shall do you in. We who believe in love will take jolly good care that you apostles of hate get all we've had and more—if you provoke us enough that is.”
He stopped, for Mr. Lavender's figure had rigidified on the other side of the table into the semblance of one who is about to address the House of Lords.
“I can find here,” he cried, “no analogy with religious persecution. This is a simple matter. The burden of defending his country falls equally on every citizen. I know not, and I care not, what promises were made to you, or in what spirit the laws of compulsory service were passed. You will either serve or go to prison till you do. I am a plain Englishman, expressing the view of my plain countrymen.”
The young man, tilting back in his chair, rapped on the table with the handle of his dinner-knife.
“Hear, hear!” he murmured.
“And let me tell you this,” continued Mr. Lavender, “you have no right to put a mouthful of food between your lips so long as you are not prepared to die for it. And if the Huns came here tomorrow I would not lift a finger to save you from the fate you would undoubtedly receive.”
During this colloquy their voices had grown so loud that the maid, entering in dismay, had gone into the bar and informed the company that a Conscientious Objector had eaten all the food and was “carrying on outrageous” in the coffee-room. On hearing this report those who were assembled—being four commercial travellers far gone in liquor—taking up the weapons which came nearest to hand—to wit, four syphons—formed themselves two deep and marched into the coffee-room. Aware at once from Mr. Lavender's white hair and words that he was not the Objector in question, they advanced upon the young man, who was still seated, and taking up the four points of the compass, began squirting him unmercifully with soda-water. Blinded and dripping, the unfortunate young fellow tried desperately to elude the cordon of his persecutors, only to receive a fresh stream in his face at each attempt. Seeing him thus tormented, amid the coarse laughter of these half-drunken “travellers,” Mr. Lavender suffered a moment of the most poignant struggle between his principles and his chivalry. Then, almost unconsciously grasping the ham-bone, he advanced and called out loudly:
“Stop! Do not persecute that young man. You are four and he is one. Drop it, I tell you—Huns that you are!”
The commercial fellows, however, laughed; and this infuriating Mr. Lavender, he dealt one of them a blow with the ham-bone, which, lighting on the funny point of his elbow, caused him to howl and spin round the room. One of the others promptly avenged him with a squirt of syphon in Mr. Lavender's left eye; whereon he incontinently attacked them all, whirling the ham-bone round his head like a shillelagh. And had it not been that Blink and the maid seized his coat-tails he would have done them severe injury. It was at this moment that Joe Petty, attracted by the hullabaloo, arrived in the doorway, and running up to his master, lifted him from behind and carried him from the room, still brandishing the ham-bone and kicking out with his legs. Dumping him into the car, Joe mounted hastily and drove off. Mr. Lavender sat for two or three minutes coming to his senses before full realization of what he had done dawned on him. Then, flinging the ham-bone from him, he sank back among the cushions, with his chin buried on his chest. “What have I done?” he thought over and over again. “What have I done? Taken up the bone for a Conscientious Objector—defended a renegade against great odds! My God! I am indeed less than a public man!”
And in this state of utter dejection, inanition, and collapse, with Blink asleep on his feet, he was driven back to Hampstead.