Here, There and Everywhere Part 13

I think that my father must have had a sentimental attachment for the old travelling carriages which had taken him and his family in safety over one-half of Europe, for he never parted with them, and various ancient vehicles reposed in our coach-houses, both in England and Ireland. The workmans.h.i.+p of these old carriages was so excellent that some of them, repainted and re-varnished, were still used for station-work in the country. There was in particular one venerable vehicle known as the "Travelling Clarence," which remained in constant use for more than sixty years after its birth. This carriage must have had painful a.s.sociations for my elder brothers and sisters, for they travelled in it on my parents' continental tours. My mother always complimented their nurse on the extraordinarily tidy appearance the children presented after they had been twelve hours or more on the road; she little knew that the nurse carried a cane, and that any child who fidgeted ever so slightly at once received two smart cuts on the hand from this cane, so that their ultra-neat appearance on arriving at their destination was achieved rather painfully. This Clarence was an unusually comfortable and easy-rolling carriage; it hung on Cee springs, and was far more heavily padded than a modern vehicle; it had vast pockets arranged round its capacious grey interior, and curious little circular pillows for the head were suspended by cords from its roof. On account of its comfort it was much used in its old age for station-work in Ireland. Should that old carriage have had any feelings, I can thoroughly sympathise with them.

Dreaming away in its coach-house over its varied past, it must have remembered the vine-clad hills through which it had once rolled on the banks of the swift-flowing, green Rhone. It cannot have forgotten the orange groves and olives of sunny Provence overhanging the deep-blue Mediterranean, the plains of Northern Italy where the vines were festooned from tree to tree, the mountains and clear streams of the Tyrol, or the sleepy old Belgian cities melodious with the clash of many bells. Each time that it was rolled out of its coach-house I imagine that every fibre in its antique frame must have vibrated at the thought that now it was to re-commence its wanderings. Conscious though the old carriage doubtless was that its springs were less lissom than they used to be, and that the axles which formerly ran so smoothly now creaked alarmingly, and sent sharp twinges quivering through its body, it must have felt confident that it could still accomplish what it had done fifty years earlier. I feel certain that it started full of expectations, as it felt itself guided along the familiar road which followed the windings of the lake, with the high wooded banks towering over it, and then along a mile of highroad between dense plantations of spruce and Scotch fir, until the treeless, stonewalled open country of Northern Ireland was reached.

The hopes of the old carriage must have risen high as the houses of the little town came into view; first one-storied, white-washed and thatched; then two-storied, white-washed and slated, all alike lying under a blue canopy of fragrant peat smoke. The turn to the right was the Dublin road, the road which ultimately led to the sea, and to a curious heaving contrivance which somehow led over angry waters to new and sunnier lands. No; the guiding hands directed its course to the left, down the brae, and along the over-familiar road to the station.

The old Clarence must have recognised with a sigh that its roaming days were definitely over, and that henceforth, as long as its creaking axles and stiffening springs held together, it could only look forward to an uneventful life of monotonous routine in a cold, grey Northern land; and, between ourselves, these feelings are not confined to superannuated carriages.

The old Clarence had one splendid final adventure before it fell to pieces from old age. At the 1892 Election I was the Unionist candidate for North Tyrone. In the North of Ireland political lines of demarcation are drawn sharply and definitely. People are either on one side or the other. I was quite aware that to win the seat I should have to poll every available vote. On the polling day I spent the whole day in going round the const.i.tuency and was consequently away from home. Late in the afternoon a messenger arrived at Baron's Court announcing that an elderly farmer, who lived six miles off and had lost the use of his legs, had been forgotten. As, owing to his infirmity, he was unable to sit on a jaunting-car, it had been arranged that a carriage should be sent for him, but this had not been done. The old man was most anxious to vote, but could only do so were a carriage sent for him, and in less than two hours the poll would close. My brother Ernest, and my sister-in-law, the present Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Abercorn, were at home, and realising the vital importance of every vote, they went at once up to the stables, only to find that every available man, horse, or vehicle was already out, conveying voters to the poll. The stables were deserted. The d.u.c.h.ess recollected the comfortable old Clarence, and she and my brother together rolled it out into the yard, but a carriage without horses is rather useless, and there was not one single horse left in the stalls. My brother rushed off to see if he could find anything with four legs capable of dragging a carriage. He was fortunate enough to discover an ancient Clydesdale cart-mare in some adjacent farm buildings, but she was the solitary tenant of the stalls. He noticed, however, a three-year-old filly grazing in the park, and, with the aid of a sieve of oats and a halter, he at length succeeded in catching her, leading his two captives triumphantly back to the stable-yard. Now came a fresh difficulty. Every single set of harness was in use, and the harness-room was bare. The d.u.c.h.ess had a sudden inspiration. Over the fireplace in the harness-room, displayed in a gla.s.s show-case, was a set of State harness which my father had had specially made for great occasions in Dublin: gorgeous trappings of crimson and silver, heavy with bullion. The d.u.c.h.ess hurried off for the key, and with my brother's help harnessed the astounded mare and the filly, and then put them to. The filly, unlike the majority of the young of her s.e.x, had apparently no love for the pomps and vanities of the world, and manifested her dislike of the splendours with which she was tricked-out by kicking furiously. The unclipped, ungroomed farm-horses, bedizened with crimson and silver, must have felt rather like a navvy in his working clothes who should suddenly find himself decked-out with the blue velvet mantle of a Knight of the Garter over his corduroys. The d.u.c.h.ess proposed fetching the old farmer herself, so she climbed to the box-seat and gathered the reins into her hands, but on being reminded by my brother that time was running short, and that the cart-horses would require a good deal of persuasion before they could be induced to accelerate their customary sober walk, she relinquished her place to him. Off they went, the filly still kicking frantically, the old Clydesdale mare, glittering with crimson and silver, uncertain as to whether she was dragging a plough or hauling the King in his State coach to the Opening of Parliament at Westminster. Once on the level the indignant animals felt themselves lashed into an unaccustomed gallop; they lumbered along at a clumsy canter, shaking the solid ground as they pounded it with their heavy feet, the ancient Clarence, enchanted at this last rollicking adventure, swaying and rolling behind them like a boat in a heavy sea.

This extraordinary-looking turn-out continued its headlong course over bog-roads and through rough country lanes, to the astonishment of the inhabitants, till the lame farmer's house was reached. He was carefully lifted into the carriage, conveyed to the polling-place, and recorded his vote at 7.54 p.m., with just six minutes to spare before the poll closed. As it turned out I won the seat by fifty-six votes, so this rapid journey was really superfluous, but we all thought that it would be a much closer thing.

In the North of Ireland where majorities, one way or the other, are often very narrow, electioneering has been raised almost to a fine art. A nephew of mine was the Unionist candidate for a certain city in the North of Ireland during the 1911 election. Here again it was certain that his majority could only be a very small one, and as is the custom in Ulster every individual vote was carefully attended to.

One man, though a nominal supporter, was notoriously very shaky in his allegiance. He was a railway guard and left the city daily on the 7.30 a.m. train, before the poll would open, returning by the fast train from Dublin due at 7.40 p.m. He would thus on the polling day have had ample time in which to record his vote. The change in his political views was so well known that my nephew's Election Committee had written off his vote as a hostile one, but they had reckoned without the railway signalman. This signalman was a most ardent political partisan and a strong adherent of my nephew's, and he was determined to leave nothing to chance. Knowing perfectly how the land lay, he was resolved to give the dubious guard no opportunity of recording a possibly hostile vote, so, on his own initiative, he put his signals against the Dublin train and kept her waiting for twenty-two minutes, to the bewilderment of the pa.s.sengers, until the striking of the clocks announced the closing of the poll. Then he released her, and the train rolled into the terminus at 8.5 p.m., so I fear that the guard was unable to record his vote, hostile or otherwise. I think that this is an example of _finesse_ in electioneering which would never have occurred to an Englishman. My nephew won the seat by over fifty votes.

I have again exceeded the s.p.a.ce allotted to me, and am reminded by a ruthless publisher of the present high cost of production.

We have strayed together through many lands, and should the pictures of these be dull or incomplete, I can but tender my apologies. I am quite conscious, too, that I have taken full advantage of the privilege which I claimed in the first chapter, and that I have at times wandered wide from the track which I was following. I must plead in extenuation that the interminable straight roads of France seem to me less interesting than the winding country lanes of England.

Indeed, I am unable to conceive of any one walking for pleasure along the endless vistas of the French poplar-bordered highways, where every objective is clearly visible for miles ahead; it is the English meandering by-roads, with their twists and turns, their unexpected and intimate glimpses into rural life, their variety and surprises, which tempt the pedestrian on and on. We may accept Euclid's dictum that a straight line is the shortest road between two points; a wandering line, if longer, is surely as a rule the more interesting.

A Scottish clerical friend of mine, the minister of a large parish in the South of Scotland, told me that there were just two categories of people in the world, "decent bodies" and the reverse, and that the result of his seventy years' experience of this world was that the "decent bodies" largely predominated.

Although I am unable to claim quite as many years as my friend the old minister, my experience coincides with his, the "decent bodies" are in a great majority, I have met them everywhere amongst all cla.s.ses, and in every part of the world, and their skins are not always white.

They may not be conspicuously to the fore, for the "decent bodies" are not given to self-advertis.e.m.e.nt. They have no love for the limelight, and would be distinctly annoyed should their advent be heralded with a flourish of trumpets. In the garden-borders the mignonette is a very inconspicuous little plant, and pa.s.ses almost unnoticed beside the flaunting gaudiness of the dahlia or the showy spikes of the hollyhock, yet it is from that modest, low-growing, grey-green flower that comes the sweetness that perfumes the whole air, for the most optimistic person would hardly expect fragrance from dahlias or hollyhocks. They have their uses; they are showy, decorative and aspiring, but they do not scent the garden.

Between 1914 and 1918 I, in common with most people, came across countless hundreds of "decent bodies," many of them wearing V.A.D.

nurse's uniforms. These little women did not put on their nurse's uniform merely to pose before a camera with elaborately made-up eyes and a carefully studied sympathetic expression, to return to ordinary fas.h.i.+onable attire at once afterwards. They scrubbed floors, and carried heavy weights, and worked till they nearly dropped, week after week, month after month, and year after year, but they were never too tired to whisper an encouraging word, or render some small service to a suffering lad. I wonder how many thousands of these lads owe their lives to those quiet, una.s.suming, patient little "decent bodies" in blue linen, and to the element of human sympathy which they supplied.

And what of the occupants of the hospital beds themselves? We all know the splendid record of sufferings patiently borne, of indomitable courage and cheerfulness, and of countless little acts of thoughtfulness and consideration for others in a worse plight even than themselves. Who, after having had that experience, can falter in their belief that the "decent bodies" are in a majority?

I know many people looking forward to the future with gloom and apprehension. I do not share their views. For the moment the more blatant elements in the community are unquestionably monopolising the stage and focussing attention on themselves, but I know that behind them are the vast unseen armies of the "decent bodies," who will a.s.sert themselves when the time comes.

These "decent bodies" are not the exclusive product of one country, of one cla.s.s, or of one s.e.x. They are to be found "Here, There, and Everywhere."