Who should come in after luncheon but my good neighbour from above – clad in a somewhat rusty tweed suit, but retaining the peculiar slinging gait and easy lounge of his class. ‘Should have been in yesterday,’ said he heartily, ‘but I was busy packing my traps together in case of an emergency. I’m all right now,’ he added with a sigh of relief. ‘I could start at a couple of hours notice.’
‘Start!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why, Major, you don’t mean seriously to say that your services may be required in the field?’
‘And why not, sir – why not?’ asked my companion hotly. ‘Do you imagine, sir, that my age disqualifies me?’
‘Your health,’ I suggested.
‘My health is never so good as when I am in harness. A campaign acts upon me as a cholagogue, sir – stirs my liver up. Podophyllin is nothing to it. Why, I assure you, I started for Magdala weighing nine stone eight and as yellow as a guinea, and I came back as brown as a chip, and turned the scales at eleven stone. That’s what a campaign did for me, sir.’
‘But I had no idea—’ said I a little timidly, for the Veteran was evidently very touchy upon the question of his fitness for hard work. ‘I had no idea that there were any complications between our government and foreign powers. I was under the impression that we were at peace with the whole world.’
The Major produced a folded newspaper from his coat-tail pocket and after much fumbling and searching pounced upon a very small telegram in diminutive type which was stowed away under the meteorological chart in a back column. Crumpling the paper up so as to bring this item to the front, he inflated his chest and smiled at me with a smile of superior knowledge. ‘At peace with the world,’ said he impressively, ‘listen to this. “The Russian governor of Kashgaria has determined to send a brigade of Cossacks to the Kuldja frontier in order to check the depredations of the marauding Tartars.” There, what do you think of that!’ roared the Major, slapping the paper down upon the table. ‘When telegrams like that appear in the public press it is time for officers of the reserve to pack their boxes.’
‘Dear me!’ said I. ‘I am a most wretched hand at geography. I sometimes mix up the very places that I have visited. Kuldja, I presume, is upon the Indian frontier?’
‘Nothing of the kind, sir,’ the Major answered sternly. ‘It is a thousand miles or more from our Indian possessions. Kuldja is an outlying province in the north of China. We are not to be hoodwinked with all this nonsense about Tartar marauders. No, sir, the Russian bear wants to fasten its greedy claws upon Kuldja itself. I say that it is time for Great Britain to put her foot down and to declare once for all that she will not suffer it.’
‘But I understand you to say that Kuldja belongs to China and not to England. I don’t observe in this paper that China has shown any particular alarm about this Russian advance.’
‘And is an Englishman to take the initiative from a Chinaman?’ asked the Major with withering sarcasm. ‘Gad, sir, we may have deteriorated but we have not quite come down to that yet. If the Chinese Empire has not spirit enough to defend its own frontier, is that any reason why we should allow the Russians to strengthen their base in Central Asia?’
‘What are we to do then, Major?’ I asked.
‘Do!’ he cried, with his grizzly whiskers bristling with indignation. ‘We must put down this infamous land-hunger. If need be, we must take Kuldja ourselves and hold it against all comers. We must blockade the Black Sea, send an ironclad squadron into the Baltic, batter down the forts at Kronstadt and set St Petersburg in a blaze. We must have our cruisers in the White Sea and reduce Archangel to ashes, while our Pacific squadron sinks or captures every Russian warship in those waters. At the same time we must buy over the Amir of Afghanistan and push a couple of hundred thousand Anglo-Indian troops through the passes of the Hindoo-Koosh. If necessary I would arm every male in the country from twenty to fifty and pack them off to Asia. That’s my idea of a spirited policy, which would check aggressiveness. By Heavens, I’d make them rue the day that ever they laid hands upon Kuldja!’
I suppose that every country is afflicted with ultra-patriots of this explosive type. Jingoism, Chauvinism, Panslavism, Spread-eagleism, it breaks out in nasty blotches all over the globe, and a very unhealthy irritative condition it is. The only thing to be said for it is that it is a shade or two better than the sordid preference of private to public interests which prevails in some other quarters. Here is this old gentleman, who is a kind-hearted man enough – I saw him throw a beetle out of the window rather than crush it – howling out for a war which would put a third of the world into mourning, and all for the sake of some grievance which is so shadowy that it rests upon the supposition of a supposition. What makes him more dangerous is that he is in deadly earnest over it – so earnest that he is quite ready and even eager to risk his own life upon the quarrel. Imagine the danger of an autocratic system of government by which such a man as this might find himself at the head of a state with unrestrained powers of pursuing what he would call a spirited policy towards his neighbours.
While these thoughts were passing through my head the Major was standing upon my tigerskin with his back to the fireplace, red and angry like a smouldering volcano, with a thick wreath of cigar smoke curling up from his crater. It may have been the influence of the narcotic or it may have been the effect of my smiling and pacific visage, but the warlike cloud cleared gradually away from his rubicund features and left him benign and cheerful.
‘I am going up to the Horse Guards with my invention this afternoon,’ he remarked. ‘I have some hope that they will adopt my idea of a metallic gunstock.’
‘I had no idea that you were an inventor, Major,’ said I.
‘Yes, worse luck! I wouldn’t be living up two pair of stairs in an attic if it wasn’t for that same turn for invention. It has certainly elevated me in the world. I assure you what I have spent in patents would have been enough to keep me in luxury for my old age. The vexation of the thing is that these plans and contrivances of mine, the fruit of a life’s experience and of more money than I could afford, are rotting away in the drawers or pigeon-holes of some deputy-assistant nobody at the War Office who has just brains enough to sign his name at the back of the quarterly cheque which represents his own unearned and exorbitant salary. So is it not a disgrace?’ cried the Major, waxing warm again. ‘Is it not an insufferable scandal? Here is England, the richest country in the world, and the one in which mechanical and inventive genius has reached its highest development – and yet, thanks to our effete administration, we must be for ever the last to adopt an improvement not only in military but – to our shame be it said! – in naval matters also. Who brought out the propeller? A Swede – who, after offering it in vain to the British Admiralty, took his invention over to America with him. Who brought out ironclads? The French. Monitors? The Americans. Rams? The Americans. Breech-loaders? The Prussians. Machine guns? The French. Torpedoes? The Americans. How is it that we are nowhere in the list? Is it want of money or want of brains or want of individual enterprise? Nothing of the kind. It’s because we have a set of infernal lazy rascals at the head of affairs who have been pitchforked into their position by some titled relation and who don’t care a brass farthing about the credit of the nation as long as they are allowed to have a good time – to guzzle at public dinners and to return thanks when some sycophant proposes their health. Their health indeed! By Jove, I would hang one or two of them if I had my way! Why should the humble private soldier be liable to death for dereliction of duty, while the superiors of his superiors openly and notoriously neglect theirs? If our rank and file were as much behind Continental troops as our departmental officials and administrators are behind those of foreign countries, I wouldn’t give much for Bank of England stock.’124
‘You speak feelingly on the subject,’ I remarked.
‘So would you if you had had my experience,’ said he. ‘Is there a man who doubts that if the business of a private firm was managed in the same way
as is the public business of the country, that firm would speedily find itself in the Bankruptcy Court? It is not the soldier or the sailor or the dockyard man who is overpaid. The mischief lies with the sinecurists, the useless chiefs of useless departments with heads as wooden as the desks they write upon – the favoured young scions of the aristocracy who lounge into their offices at their own sweet will, and spend their days in retailing and inventing questionable anecdotes. Those are the red-tape worms who would have sapped England’s strength if she were not the robust elastic country that she is. I’ll look in tomorrow and show you one or two of my models and plans – if it won’t bore you. You appear to take an intelligent interest in the matter.’
That’s what Dr Julep remarked about his germ theories and his beneficent attempts to prolong human life, I reflected. Strange that my mind should be attracted by two subjects which are so exactly the converse of each other. Perhaps, however, they all fit in this wonderful conundrum of life and have each their subordinate but indispensable part in the grand scheme of Creation. Slaying and saving, breaking down and building up, dissolving and reuniting, synthesis and analysis; who shall say which is ultimately the true philanthropy and which the violation of Nature’s profound and mysterious laws?
CHAPTER 5
I HAVE HAD a very momentous experience this morning – so moving a one that I rose superior to my ankle joint and forgot all about my rheumatic gout. This was nothing less than a visit from a young lady. Not a very rare event, perhaps, in the eyes of the lucky dogs who have had the good sense to stick to conventionality and to cultivate society,125 but to a deserted friendless womanless old wanderer like me it was a portentous occurrence indeed. For a moment a wild hope rose up in my heart that there existed a real living woman who had come to claim kinship with me, or at least to show some interest in me were it only on the strength of knowing those whom I had known. No one values women so much as the man who has had to do without them.126
She was shown in immediately after breakfast, well-gloved, dark-dressed, thickly veiled, with a square brown paper package in her hands. I sprang off the sofa and, bowing her into a chair, sat palpitating in front of her, combating against all manner of wild impulses which urged me to ring for wine or coffee and bread-and-butter.
‘You probably don’t know me by sight,’ she said, throwing up her veil and revealing the pale interesting features of my neighbour over the way.
‘Oh yes, I know you very well indeed,’ I answered frankly. ‘I have frequently had the pleasure of seeing you at the window.’
She smiled and a faint colour tinged her white cheeks. ‘I sit in the window in order to get light enough for my work,’ she said, speaking in the deep rich voice which is the only physical mark of good breeding which I have never met with among the under-bred. ‘I have taken the liberty of calling upon you to thank you for your extreme kindness in favouring me with a commission, and to learn whether the sketches are satisfactory.’
‘But, my dear young lady,’ said I, ‘there must be some mistake. Did not Mrs—’
‘Your delicacy has been as great as your generosity,’ she interrupted smiling. ‘Mrs Rundle gave her instructions admirably, but when I came over last night to know whether the subjects were to her taste, she was compelled to acknowledge whom the pictures really belonged to.’
‘I generally employ an agent in these matters,’ I explained, feeling rather hot and uncomfortable, as if my hair needed brushing down behind. ‘It is the usual custom. May I ask if these are the sketches?’ I continued, pointing at the brown paper parcel.
‘I have them here,’ she said, undoing the string with tremulous fingers. ‘I do hope that you will like them. This first one is a picture of a Cornish pilchard boat.’
‘Very nice indeed,’ said I critically.
‘And this represents the Dieppe fishing fleet going out at night, and this is their return next day, with all the men’s wives waiting upon the quay.’
‘Capital!’ I cried, with a wooden smile. ‘By the way, what an extraordinary existence a fisherman’s wife must lead. She appears to be invariably standing at the extreme edge of the quay with her hand shading her eyes, and her gaze fixed upon the horizon.’
My visitor looked at me with a troubled and somewhat annoyed expression. It is dangerous to venture upon what is usually termed dry humour with women unless you know them very well. In the latter case they put it down as harmless idiocy, but until they have learned to know your ways, it invariably puzzles and offends them.
‘This last one,’ she said, ignoring my attempt at jocularity, ‘represents the hauling up of the nets when there has been a heavy catch. I am very fond of the sea, and my father always says that my sea pictures are better than any of my other sketches. I hope you don’t think the subjects too uniform!’
What a heaven’s blessing it is that we can still keep our private opinions locked away at the very bottom of our souls. These attempts at thought-reading which we hear of should be made a criminal offence. Why, if such a system became universal, life would soon be unbearable.127 Now for all this world could give, I would not have that anxious wistful-eyed creature suspect the aversion which I have for the class of sketches which she has selected. I ranged the four of them upon my table, therefore, and stood in front of them with my head cocked upon one side, beaming at them with as much admiration as Ruskin in front of his Vittore Carpaccio. What an insufferable and immoral creature a rigidly truthful mortal would be!
‘But surely,’ said she, looking round my room, ‘you cannot think of hanging my crude pictures among these beautiful paintings. If I had seen your room or known what taste you have, I should never have dared to draw anything for you. Why – whatever can have induced you to order daubs like this when you were surrounded by so many masterpieces?’
‘Speculation,’ I said boldly: ‘no one can tell how valuable these may become someday when you have made your name, perhaps, and developed into a Miss Thompson or a Rosa Bonheur.128 A great deal of money has been made by far-sighted people in that way. I am so well satisfied with the results of my investment that I should consider it a favour if you will paint me a larger and more ambitious picture.’
‘It is so very kind and good of you,’ she said, and I thought I saw a little moisture in her eyes as she spoke, ‘but the fact is that for a month or two I shall be rather engaged. There is no reason why I should not tell you that we are to leave our rooms opposite and that I am to be married next Wednesday. When we have settled down, I shall be only too happy to carry out your kind commission.’
‘Allow me to wish you every happiness in the great step which you are taking,’ said I, opening the door and bowing, for she had risen to go. ‘You will let me know where to find you. You must not be allowed to forget the fine arts altogether among your household cares.’
‘No fear of that,’ she said, with a bright smile. ‘He is as fond of them as I am. Goodbye, sir – and many thanks for your encouragement.’ Her gloved hand came out hesitatingly as though she were not sure whether she were taking a liberty or not, but I solved the question by capturing it and giving it a friendly little shake. Fare-thee-well, my earnest little wholesome woman, may the Fates be good to thee, and thy road through life be as bright and pleasant as thyself!
So she is going off to fulfil the great female destiny – to become the supplement of a man.129 I am conscious of a vague feeling of discontent when I think of it, and yet what higher mission can she perform? It will be best for her, and assuredly best for him. The highest of men and the noblest of women are incomplete, mutilated fragmentary creatures, as long as they are single. Do what they may to persuade themselves that their unnatural state is the happiest, they are still full of vague unrests, of dim ill-defined dissatisfaction, of a tendency to narrow ways and petty thoughts. Alone, each is a half-made creature with every instinct and feeling yearning for its missing moiety.130 Together, the man and the woman form a complete and symmetrical whole, the mind of each strongest
where that of the other most needs reinforcing. Whatever may happen in this world, I am convinced that in the next, every male soul will have a female one attached to it, or combined with it, to round it off and give it symmetry. So thought the old Mormon who adduced it as an argument in favour of his creed. ‘You cannot,’ said he, ‘take your money, your railway, or your mining stocks into the next world with you; but our marriage is not only for life but for eternity, and we shall have our wives and children with us, and so make a good start in the world to come.’131
The Narrative of John Smith Page 11
