The Message Part 28

XII

BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER

Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The G.o.dhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

_Ode to Duty._

I suffered no change so far as Constance Grey's demeanour to me was concerned; but certainly John Crondall had altered since the day upon which I had so inopportunely entered his room when Constance was with him. At times I fancied his change was toward me personally, and I thought it curiously unlike the man to cherish any sort of unkindness over an accident. But then, again, at odd times, I watched him with other men among our now considerable train, and the conclusion was borne in upon me that the change had nothing to do with me, but was general in its character. He was more stern, less cheery, and far more reserved than before.

And this I thought most strange, for it seemed to me that, even though Constance and my chief might have agreed that nothing like an engagement between them must come till our work was done, yet the understanding which could lead to the kiss I had seen was surely warrant enough for a change of quite another character than this one. I thought of it whenever I took Constance's hand in greeting her; and I think my eyes must sometimes have told her what my heart always felt: that in me, this right to do as Crondall had done would have seemed an entry into Paradise, let circ.u.mstances and conditions be what they might. And with such a thought I would recall what, to me, would never be the least of Black Sat.u.r.day's events: that once Constance Grey had lain in my arms--unconsciously, it was true; and that upon the same occasion I had kissed her, and known in that moment that never again could she be as other women for me.

I was often tempted to speak to Constance of the change I saw in John Crondall, and one day in Carlisle I yielded to the temptation. At one and the same time I both craved and dreaded definite news of the understanding between the woman I loved and the man I liked and respected more than any other. I wanted Constance's confidence; yet I felt as though my life would be stripped bare by definite knowledge that she was betrothed. So, moth-like, I hovered about the perilous subject, with a nervous endeavour to lend natural composure to my voice.

"Do you notice any particular change in John Crondall of late?" I asked.

And it seemed to me that Constance flushed slightly as she answered me:

"Change? No. Has he changed?"

"Well, he does not seem to be nearly so happy as----" And there I broke away from a dangerous comparison, and subst.i.tuted--"as he was awhile back."

"Really? But what makes you think that?"

"I fancy he is much more reserved--less frank and more preoccupied; not so jolly, in fact, as he always was. I have thought so for several weeks."

"I am sorry, very sorry; and I do hope you are mistaken. Of course he is overworked--we all are; but that never hurt him before; and with things going so splendidly---- Oh, I hope you are mistaken."

"Perhaps so," I said. "Certainly I think he has every reason to be happy--to be happy and proud; every reason."

And I stopped at that; but Constance made no sign to me; and I wondered she did not, for we were very intimate, and she was sweetly kind to me in those days. Indeed, once when I looked up sharply at her with a question from some work we were engaged upon, I saw a light in her beautiful eyes which thrilled my very heart with strange delight. Her expression had changed instantly, and I told myself I had no sort of business to be thrilled by a look which was obviously born of reverie, of thoughts about John Crondall. Such a sweet light of love her eyes held! I told myself for the hundredth time that no consideration should ever cloud the happiness of the man who was so fortunate as to inspire it--to have won the heart which looked out through those s.h.i.+ning eyes.

But it must not be supposed that I had much leisure for this sort of meditation. My feeling for Constance certainly dominated me. Indeed, it accounted for everything of import in my life--for my general att.i.tude of mind and, I make no doubt, for my being where I was and playing the part I did play in _The Citizens'_ campaign. But our life was not one that admitted of emotional preoccupation of any sort. We were too close to the working mechanism of national progress. There never was more absorbing work than the making and enrolment of _Citizens_ at such a juncture in the history of one's country.

The spirit of our work, no less than that of the Canadian preachers'

teaching, was actually in the air at that time. It dominated English life, from the mansions of the great landholders to the cottages of the field-labourers and the tenements of the factory-hands. It affected every least detail of the people's lives, and coloured all thought and action in England--a process which I am sure was strengthened by the remarkable growth of Colonial sentiment throughout the country at this time. The tide of emigration seemed to have been reversed by some subtle process of nature: the strong ebb of previous years had become a flow of immigration. Everywhere one met Canadians, Australians, South Africans, and an unusual number of Anglo-Indians.

"We've been doing pretty well of late," said one of the Canadians to me when I commented to him upon this influx into the Old Country of her Colonial sons; "and I reckon we can most of us spare time to see things through a bit at Home. The way our folk look at it on the other side is this: They reckon we've got to worry through this German business somehow and come out the right way up on the other side, and a good deal more solid than we went in. We don't reckon there's going to be any more 'Little Englandism' or Cobdenism after this job's once put through; and that's a proposition we're mighty keenly interested in, you see. We put most of our eggs into the Empire basket, away back, while you people were still busy giving Africa to the Boers, and your Navy to the dogs, and your markets to Germany, and your trade and esteem to any old foreigner that happened along with a nest to feather. I reckon that's why we're most of us here; and maybe that's why we mostly bring our cartridge-belts along. A New South Wales chap told me last night you couldn't get up a cricket match aboard a P. and O. or Orient boat, not for a wager--nothing but shooting compet.i.tions and the gentle art of drill. You say 'Shun!' to the next Colonial you meet, and listen for the click of his heels! Not that we set much store by that business ourselves, but we learned about the Old Country taste for it in South Africa, and it's all good practice, anyhow, and good discipline."

But, whatever the motives and causes behind their coming, it is certain that an astonis.h.i.+ngly large number of our oversea kinsmen were arriving in England each week; and I believe every one of them joined _The Citizens_. Their presence and the part they played in affairs had a marked effect upon the spirit of the time. All sorts and conditions of people, whose thoughts in the past had never strayed far from their own parishes, now talked familiarly of people, things, and places Colonial.

The idea of our race being one big tribe, though our homes might be hemispheres apart, seemed to me to take root for the first time in the minds of the general public at about this period. I spoke of it to John Crondall, and reminded him how he had urged this idea upon us years before in Westminster with but indifferent success.

"Ah, well," he said, "they have come to it of their own accord now; and that means they'll get a better grip of it than any one could ever have given them. That's part of our national character, and not a bad part."

We were heading southward through Lancas.h.i.+re, when the news reached us of that extension of the British Const.i.tution which first gave us a really Imperial Parliament. The country received the news with a deep-seated and sober satisfaction. Perhaps the majority hardly appreciated at once the full significance of this first great accomplishment of the Free Government. But the published details showed the simplest among us that by this act the congeries of scattered nations we had called the British Empire were now truly welded into an Imperial State. It showed us that we English, and all those stalwart kinsmen of ours across the Atlantic and on the far side of the Pacific--north, south, east, and west, wherever the old flag flew--were now actually as well as nominally subjects of one Government, and that that Government would for the future be composed of men chosen as their representatives by the people of every country in the Empire; men drawn together under one historic roof by one firm purpose--the service and administration of a great Imperial State.

As I say, the realization produced deep-seated satisfaction. Of late we had learned to take things soberly in England; but there was no room for doubt about the effect of this news upon the public. The events of the past half-year, the pilgrimage of the Canadian preachers, the new devotion to Duty (which seemed almost a new religion though it was actually but an awakening to the religion of our fathers), the influx among us of Colonial kinsmen, and the campaign of _The Citizens_; these things combined to give us a far truer and more keen appreciation of the news than had been possible before.

Indeed, looking back upon my experience in Fleet Street, I must suppose the whole thing would have been impossible before. I could imagine how my _Daily Gazette_ colleagues would have scoffed at the Imperial Parliament's first executive act, which was the devising of an Imperial Customs Tariff to give free trade within the Empire, and complete protection so far as the rest of the world was concerned, with strictly reciprocatory concessions to such nations as might choose to offer these to us, and to no others.

Truly Crondall had said that the Canadian preachers accomplished more than they knew. The sense of duty, individual and national, burned in England for the first time since Nelson's day: a steady, white flame.

The acceptance by all cla.s.ses of the community of the Imperial Parliament's programme of work proved this. The public had been shown that our duty to the whole Empire, and to our posterity, demanded this thing. That was enough. Five years before, one year before, the country had been shown very clearly where its duties lay; and the showing had not moved five men in a hundred from their blind pursuit of individual pleasure and individual gain. Army, Navy, Colonies, Imperial prestige--all might go by the board.

But now, all that was changed. My old friend, Stairs, with Reynolds, and their following, had given meaning and application to the teaching of our national chastis.e.m.e.nt. Religion ruled England once more; and it was the religion, not of professions and a.s.severations, but of Duty. The House of Commons and, more even than our first Free Government, the Imperial Parliament in Westminster Hall had behind them the absolute confidence of a united people. If England could have been convinced at that time that Duty demanded a barefoot pilgrimage to Palestine, I verily believe Europe would have speedily been dissected by a thousand-mile column of marching Britishers.

But the Canadian preachers taught a far more practical faith than that; and, behind them, John Crondall and his workers opened the door upon a path more urgent and direct than that of any pilgrimage; the path to be trodden by all British citizens who respected the white hairs of their fathers, and the innocent trust of their children; the path of Duty to G.o.d and King and Empire; the path for all who could hear and understand the call of our own blood.

XIII

ONE SUMMER MORNING

To humbler functions, awful Power!

I call thee: I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; O, let my weakness have an end!

Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of Truth thy bondman let me live.

_Ode to Duty._

Winter rushed past us like a tropical squall that year, and, before one had noted the beautiful coming of spring, young summer was upon the land. For me, serving as I did the founder and leader of _The Citizens_, life was filled as never before. I had never even dreamed of a life so compact of far-reaching action, of intimate relation with great causes.

I know now that the speed and strenuousness of it was telling upon all of us. But we did not realize it then. John Crondall seemed positively tireless. The rest of us had our moments of exhaustion, but never, I think, of depression. Our work was too finely productive and too richly rewarded for that. But we were thin, and a little fine-drawn, like athletes somewhat overtrained.

Published records have a.n.a.lyzed our progress through the country, the Canadian preachers' and our own; but nothing I have read, or could tell, gives more than a pale reflection of that triumphal progress, as we lived it. In our wake, harlots forsook harlotry to learn something of nursing by doing the rough domestic work of hospitals; famous misers and money-grubbers gave fortunes to _The Citizens'_ cause, and peers' sons left country mansions to learn defensive arts, in the ranks; drunkards left their toping for honest work, and actresses sold their wardrobes to provide funds for village rifle corps.

There was no light sentiment, no sort of hysteria, at the back of these miracles. Be it remembered that the streets of English towns had never been so orderly; public-houses and places of amus.e.m.e.nt had never been so empty; churches and chapels had never been one-half so full. During that year, as the records show, it became the rule in many places for curates and deacons to hold services outside the churches and chapels, while packed congregations attended the services held within. And it was then that, for the first time, we saw parsons leading the young men of their flocks to the rifle-ranges, and competing with them there.

The lessons we learned in those days will never, I suppose, seem so wonderful to any one else as to those of us who had lived a good slice of our lives before the lessons came; before the need of them was felt or understood. "For G.o.d, our Race, and Duty!" Conceive the stirring wonder of the watchword, when it was no more than a month old!

The seasons rushed by us, as I said. But one short conversation served to mark for me the coming of summer. We had reached the Surrey hills in our homeward progress toward London. On a Sat.u.r.day night we held a huge meeting in Guildford, and very early on Sunday morning I woke with a curiously insistent desire to be out in the open. Full of this inclination I rose, dressed, and made my way down to the side entrance of the hotel, where a few servants were moving about drowsily. As I pa.s.sed out under a high archway into the empty, sunny street, with its clean Sabbath hush, Constance Grey stepped out from the front entrance to the pavement.

"I felt such a longing to be out in the open this morning," she said, when we had exchanged greeting. "It's months since I had a walk for the walk's sake, and now I mean to climb that hill that we motored over from Farnham--the Hog's Back, as they call it."

We both thought it deserved some more beautiful name, when we turned on its crest and looked back at Guildford in the hollow, s.h.i.+ning in summer morning haze.

"Now surely that's King Arthur's Camelot," said Constance.

And then we looked out over the delectable valley toward the towers of Charterhouse, across the roofs of two most lovable hamlets, from which blue smoke curled in delicate spirals up from the bed of the valley, through a nacreous mist, to somewhere near our high level.

We gazed our fill, and I only nodded when Constance murmured:

"It's worth a struggle, isn't it?"

I knew her thought exactly. It was part of our joint life, of the cause we both were serving. I had been pointing to some object across the valley, and as my hand fell it touched Constance's hand, which was cool and fresh as a flower. Mine was moist and hot. I never was more at a loss for words. I took her hand in mine and held it. So we stood, hand in hand, like children, looking out over that lovely English valley. My heart was all abrim with tenderness; but I had no words. I had been a good deal moved by the curious instance of telepathic sympathy or understanding which had brought me from my bed that morning and led to our meeting.

"You have given me so much, taught me so much, Constance," I said at last.