' I have a nasty trick of forgetting
If you feel shaken, help yourself to a brandy and soda, and then
that my hands are abnormally developed.
If you feel shaken, help yourself to a brandy and soda, and then
that my hands are abnormally developed.
Fletcher - Lucian the Dreamer
During those two years he pub- lished two new volumes, of a somewhat new note, which sold better in a French translation than in the English original, and at Mr.
Harcourt's urgent request he wrote a romantic drama.
It filled the Athenaeum during the whole of a London season, and the financial results were gratifying in a high degree, for the glamour and mystery of the affaire Damerel were still powerful, and Lucian had become a personality and a force by reason of his troubles.
At the end of two years, the doctor to whose care Haidee had been entrusted called Lucian into his private room one day and told him that he had grave news to communicate. His patient, he said, was dying—slowly,
But there was more than that: before her death she would recover her reason. She would probably recall everything that had taken place; it was more than possible that she would have painfully clear
but very surely.
recollections of the scene, whatever it might be, that had immediately preceded her sudden loss of sanity. It was but right, said the doctor, that Mr. Damerel should know of this, but did Mr. Damerel wish to be with his wife when this development occurred? It might be a pain- ful experience, and death must soon follow it. It was for Mr. Damerel to decide. Lucian decided on the instant. He had carried an image of Haidee in his mind for two years, and it had become fixed on his mental vision with such firmness that he could not think of her as anything but what he imagined her to be. He told the doctor that he would wish to know as soon as his
wife regained her reason —it was his duty, he said, to be with her. After that, every visit to the private asylum was made with anxious wonder if the tortured brain had cleared. —
It was not until the following spring two and a half years after the tragedy of the Bristol—that Lucian saw Haidee. He scarcely knew the woman to whom they took him. They had deluged him with warnings as to the change in her, but he had not expected to find her a
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 233
grey-haired, time-worn woman, and he had difficulty in preserving his composure when he saw her. He did not know it, but her reason had returned some time before, and she had become fully cognisant of her surroundings and of what was going to happen. More than that, she had asked for a priest and had enjoyed ghostly consola- tion. She gazed at Lucian with a curious wistfulness,
and yet there was something strangely
sullen in her
manner.
* I wanted to see you,' she said, after a time. ' I
know I'm going to die very soon, and there are things I want to say. I remember all that happened, you know. Oh yes, it's quite clear to me now, but somehow it doesn't trouble me—I was mad enough when I did it. '
' Don't speak of that,' he said. ' Forget it all. '
She shook her head.
' Never mind,' she went on. ' What I wanted to say
was, that I'm sorry that—well, you know. '
Lucian gazed at her with a sickening fear creeping
closely round his heart. He had forced the truth away
from him: he was to hear it at last from the lips of a
dying woman.
* You were to blame, though,' she said presently.
' You ought not to have let me go alone on his yacht or to the Highlands. It was so easy to go wrong there. '
Lucian could not control a sharp cry.
' Don't! ' he said, ' don't! You don't know what you're saying. It can't be that—that you wrote the truth in that letter? It was—hallucination. '
She looked at him out of dull eyes.
' I want you to say you forgive me,' she said. ' The priest —he said I ought to ask your forgiveness. '
Lucian bowed his head.
' Yes,' he said, ' I forgive all you wish. Try not to
think of it any more. '
He was saying over and ovei to himself that she was
still disordered of mind, that the sin she was confessing was imaginary; but deeper than his insistence on this lay a dull consciousness that he was hearing the truth.
234
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
He stood watching her curiously. She suddenly looked up at him, and he saw a strange gleam in her eyes.
' After all,' she said, half spitefully, ' you came between him and me at the beginning. '
Lucian never saw his wife again. A month later she was dead. All the time of the burial service he was thinking that it would have been far better if she had never recovered her reason. For two years he had cherished a dream of her that had assumed tender and pathetic tones. It had become a part of him; the ugly reality of the last grim moments of her life stood out in violent contrast to its gentleness and softness. When the earth was thrown upon the coffin, he was wondering at the wide difference which exists between the real and the unreal, and whether the man is most truly blessed who walks amongst stern verities or dreams amidst the
poppy-beds of illusion. One thing was certain : the face of truth was not always beautiful, nor her voice always soothing to the ear.
XXX
After Haidee's death Lucian left Paris, and during the rest of the spring and summer of that year went wander-
autumn.
unwonted activity.
CHAPTER
ing hither and thither about Europe.
this time in a state of quiescence; he lounged from one place to another, faintly interested and lazily amused. He was beginning to be a little bored by life, and a little tempted to drift with its stream. It was in this frame of mind that he returned to London in the following
There, soon after his return, he sprang into
It was on the very eve of the outbreak of the war in South Africa. Men were wondering what was going
His mind was at
Some, clearer of vision than their fellows, saw that nothing but war would solve the problem which
to happen.
had assumed vast proportions
because of the vacillating poUcy of a weak Government of twenty years before; the Empire was going to pay now, with millions of its treasure and thousands of its men, for the fatal error which had brought the name of
in the Transvaal and given the Boers a false notion of English strength and character.
Others were all for a policy of smoothing things over, for spreading green boughs over pitfalls — not that any one should fall into them, but in order to make believe that the pitfalls were not there. Others again, of a breed that
England into contempt
islands, advocated, not without success, a policy of surrender to everybody and everything. There was much talking at street comers and in the market-place; much angry debate and acrimonious discussion. Men began to be names, and few took the trouble to meantime, events
has but lately sprung into existence in these
labelled by new
understand each
developed as inevitable consequence always develops them in such situations. Amidst the chattering of tiny voices the thunders of war burst loud and clear.
other. In the 235
and strange intricacies
236
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
Fond as he was of insisting on his ItaHan nationality, he was passionately
devoted to England and the English, and had a great admiration for the history and traditions of the country
Lucian was furious with indignation.
There had once been a question in his mind as to whether he should write in English or in Italian—he had elected to serve England for many reasons, but chiefly because he recognised her greatness Like all Italians, he loved her for what she had done for Greece and for Italy. England and Liberty were synonymous names; of all nations in the world, none had made for freedom as
England had. His blood had leapt in his veins many a time at the thought of the thousand and one great things she had done, the mighty battles she had fought for truth and liberty; he had drunk in the notion from boyhood that England stood in the very vanguard of the army of deliverance. And now she was sending out her armies, marshalling her forces, pouring out her money like water, to crush a tiny folk, a nation of farmers, a sturdy, simple- minded race, one of the least amongst the peoples of the
earth! He shook his head as if he had been asleep, and asked himself if the nation had suddenly gone mad with lust of blood. It was inconceivable that the England of his dreams could do this thing. He looked for her, and found her nowhere. The streets were hot all day with the tramping of armed men. The first tidings of reverse filled the land with the old savage
determination to fight things out to the end, even though all the world should range itself on the other side.
Lucian flung all his feelings of rage, indignation, sorrow, and infinite amazement into a passionate sonnet which appeared next morning in large type, well leaded and spaced, in the columns of a London daily newspaper that favoured the views of the peace-at-any-price party. He followed it up with others. At first there was more sorrow and surprise than anything else in these admoni- tions; but as the days went on their tone altered. He
had endeavoured to bring the giant to his senses by an
of his adoption.
and beheved in her destiny.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
237
appeal to certain feelings which the giant was too much engaged to feel at that moment; eliciting no response, he became troublesome, and strove to attract the giant's attention by pricking him with pins. The giant paid small attention to this; he looked down, saw a small thing hanging about his feet with apparently mischievous intentions, and calmly pushed it away. Then Lucian began the assault in dead earnest. He could dip his pen in vitriol with the best of them, and when he realised that the giant was drunk with the lust of blood he fell upon him with fury. The vials of poetic wrath had
never been emptied of such a flood of righteous anger since the days wherein Milton called for vengeance upon the murderers of the Piedmontese.
It is an ill thing to fight against the prevalent temper of a nation. Lucian soon discovered that you may kick and prick John Bull for a long time with safety to your- self, because of his good nature, his dislike of bothering about trifles, and his natural sluggishness, but that he always draws a line somewhere, and brings down a heavy fist upon the man who crosses it. He began to find people fighting shy of his company; invitations became less in number; men nodded who used to shake hands; strong things were said in newspapers; and he was warned by friends that he was carrying things too far.
' Endeavour,' said one man, an acquaintance of some years' standing, for whose character and abilities he had a great regard, ' endeavour to get some accurate sense of the position. You are blackguarding us every day with your sonorous sonnets as if we were cut-throats and thieves going out on a murdering and marauding expedi- tion. We are nothing of the sort. We are a great nation, with a
engaged in a very difficult task. The war is bringing us together like brothers —out of its blood and ashes there will spring an Empire such as the world has never seen. You are belittling everything to the level of Hooliganism. '
' What is it but Hooliganism? ' retorted Lucian. ' The
very painful sense of responsibility,
238
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
most powerful nation in the world seizing one of the weakest by the throat ! '
' It is nothing of the sort/ said the other. ' You know it is your great curse, my dear Lucian, that you never get a clear notion of the truth. You have a trick of seeing
as you think they ought to be; you will not see them as they are. Just because the Boers happen to be numerically small, to lead a pastoral life, and to have gone into the desert like the Israelites of old, you have brought that far too powerful imagination of yours to bear upon them, and have elevated them into a class with the Swiss and the ItaHans, who fought for their country. '
' What are the Boers fighting for? ' asked Lucian.
' At present to grab somebody else's property,' returned the other. ' Don't get sentimental about them. After all, much as you love us, you're only half an Englishman, and you don't understand the English feel- ing. Are the English folk not suffering, and is a Boer widow or a Boer orphan more worthy of pity than a Yorkshire lass whose lad is lying dead out there, or a Scottish child whose father will never come back again? '
Lucian swept these small and insignificant details aside
things
with some impatience.
* You are the mightiest nation the world has ever
seen,' he said. ' You have a past—such a past as no other people can boast. You have a responsibility because of that past, and at present you have thrown all sense of it away, and are behaving like the drunken brute who rises gorged with flesh and wine, and yells for blood. This is an England with vine-leaves in her hair —it is not the England of Cromwell. '
* Ithank God it is not! ' said the other man with heartfelt reverence. ' We wish for no dictatorship here. Come, leave off slanging us in this bloodthirsty fashion, and try to arrive at a sensible view of things. Turn your energies to a practical direction—write a new romantic play for Harcourt, something that will cheer us in these dark days, and give the money for bandages
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 239
and warm socks and tobacco for poor Tommy out at the front. He isn't as picturesque —so it's said—as Brother Boer, but he's a man after all, and has a stomach. '
But Lucian would neither be cajoled nor chaffed out of his role of prophet. He became that most objection- able of all things — the man who believes he has a mes- sage, and must deliver it. He continued to hurl his philippics at the British public through the ever-ready
and the man in the street, who is not given to the drawing of fine dis-
columns of the peace-at-any-price paper,
tinctions, called him a pro-Boer.
reality, was not a pro-Boer—he merely saw the artistry of the pro-Boer position. He remembered Byron's atti- tude with respect to Greece, and a too generous instinct had led him to compare Mr. Kruger to Cincinnatus. The man in the street knew nothing of these things, and
Lucian, in strict
cared less. It seemed to him that
after all, nothing but an ink-slinger, a blooming poet, was slanging the quarter of a million men who were hurrying to Table Bay as rapidly as the War Office could get them there. To this sort of thing the man in the street objected. He did not care if Lucian's instincts were all on the side of the weaker party, nor was it an excuse that Lucian himself, in the matter of strict nation- ality, was an Italian. He had chosen to write his poems in England, said the man in the street, and also in the English language, and he had made a good thing out of it too, and no error, and the best thing he could do now was to keep a civil tongue in his head, or, rather, pen in his hand. This was no time for the cuckoo to foul the nest wherein he had had free quarters for so long.
The opinion of the man in the street is the crystallised common-sense of England, voiced in elementary lan- guage. Lucian, unfortunately, did not know this, and he kept on firing sonnets at the heads of people who, without bluster or complaint, were already tearing up their shirts for bandages. The man in the street read them, and ground his teeth, and waited for an oppor- tunity. That came when Lucian was ill-advised enough
Lucian, who was,
240
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
to allow his name to be printed in large letters upon the placard of a great meeting whereat various well-inten-
to protest against a war which had been forced upon the nation, and from which it was then impossible to draw back with either safety or honour. Lucian was still in the clouds; still thinking of Byron at Missolonghi; still harping upon the undoubted but scarcely pertinent facts
that England had freed slaves, slain giants, and waved her flag protectingly over all who ran to her for help. The foolishness of assisting at a public meeting whereat the nation was to be admonished of its wickedness in daring to assert itself never occurred to him. He was still the man with the message.
He formed one of a platform party of whom it might safely have been said that every man was a crank, and every woman a faddist. He was somewhat astonished and a little perplexed when he looked around him, and realised that his fellow-protestants were not of the sort wherewith he usually foregathered; but he speedily became interested in the audience. It had been intended to restrict admission to those well-intentioned folk who desired peace at any price, but the man in the street had placed a veto upon that, and had come in large numbers, and with a definite resolve to take part in the proceedings. The meeting began in a cheerful
tioned but somewhat thoughtless persons proposed
fashion, and ended in one dear to the English heart. The chairman was listened to with some forbearance and patience; a lady was allowed to have her say because she was a woman. It was a sad inspiration that led the chairman to put Lucian up next;
a still sadder one to refer to his poetical exhortations to the people. The sight of Lucian, the fashionably attired, dilettante, dreamy-eyed poet, who had lashed and pricked the nation whose blood was being poured out like water, and whose coffers were being depleted at a rapid rate, was too much for the folk he essayed to address. They knew him and his recent record. At the first word they rose as one man, and made for the
and vivacious
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 241
platlorm. Lucian and the seekers after peace were obliged to run, as rabbits run to their warrens, and the enemy occupied the position. Somebody unfurled a large flag, and the entire assemblage joined in singing Mr. Kipling's invitation to contribute to the tambourine
fund.
In the school of life the teacher may write many
lessons with the whitest chalk upon the blackest black- board, and there will always be a child in the corner who will swear that he cannot see the writing. Lucian could not see the lesson of the stormed platform, and he continued his rhyming crusade and made enemies by the miUion. He walked with closed eyes along a road literally bristling with bayonets: it was nothing but the good-natured English tolerance of a poet as being more or less of a lunatic that kept the small boys of the Strand from going for him. Men at street comers made remarks upon him which were delightful to over- hear: it was never Lucian's good fortune to overhear them. His nose was in the air.
He heard the truth at last from that always truthful person, the man in liquor. In the smoking-room of his club he was encountered one night by a gentleman
fashion, and whose natural patriotism glowed and scintillated around him
who had dined in too generous
He met Lucian face to face, and he stopped and looked him up and down with a fine
with equal generosity.
and eminently natural scorn.
* Mr. Lucian Damerel,' he said, with an only slightly
articulation; ' Mr. Lucian Damerel —the gentleman who spills ink while better men spend blood. ' Then he spat on the ground at Lucian's feet, and moved away with a sneer and a laugh.
interrupted
The room was full of men. They all saw, and they all heard. No one spoke, but every one looked at
Lucian. He knew that the drunken man had voiced the prevalent sentiment. He looked round him, with- out reproach, without defiance, and walked quietly
Q
242
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
trom the room and the house. He had suddenly real- ised the true complexion of things.
Next morning, as he sat over a late breakfast in his rooms, he was informed that a young gentleman who would give no name desired earnestly to see him. He was feeling somewhat bored that morning, and he bade his man show the unknown one in. He looked up from his coffee to behold a very young gentleman upon whom the word subaltern was written in very large letters, whose youthful face was very grim and earnest, and who was obviously a young man with a mission. He pulled himself up in stiff fashion as the door closed upon him, and Lucian observed that one hand evi-
dently grasped something his back.
which was concealed behind
' Mr. Lucian Damerel? ' the young gentleman with polite interrogation.
said,
Lucian bowed and looked equally interrogative. His visitor glowered upon him.
' I have come to tell you that you are a damned scoundrel, Mr. Lucian Damerel,' he said, ' and to thrash you within an inch of your beastly life! '
Lucian stared, smiled, and rose lazily from his seat.
The visitor displayed a cutting-whip, brandished it, and advanced as seriously as if he were on parade. Lucian met him, seized the cutting-whip in one hand and his assailant's collar in the other, disarmed him, shook him, and threw him lightly into an easy-chair, where he lay gasping and surprised. Lucian hung the cutting-whip on the wall. He looked at his visitor with a speculative gaze.
' What shall I do with you, young sir? ' he said. ' Throw you out of the window, or grill you on the fire, or merely kick you downstairs? I suppose you
thought that because I happen to be what your lot call " a writin' feller," there wouldn't be any spunk in me, eh? '
The visitor was placed in a strange predicament. He had expected the sweet savour of groans and tears
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
243
a muscleless, flabby ink-and-parchment thing: this man had hands which could grip Hke steel and
frorrn
Moreover, he was cool—he actually sat down again and continued his breakfast.
iron.
* I hope I didn't squeeze your throat too much,' said Lucian politely.
' I have a nasty trick of forgetting
If you feel shaken, help yourself to a brandy and soda, and then
that my hands are abnormally developed.
tell me what's the matter. '
The youth shook his head hopelessly.
' Y—you have insulted the Army ! ' he stammered at
last.
* Of which, I take it, you are the self-appointed
Well, I'm afraid I don't plead guilty, because, you see, I know myself rather better than you
champion.
know me. But you came to punish me? Well, again, you see you can't do that. Shall I give you satisfaction of some sort? There are pistols in that cabinet —shall we shoot at each other across the table? There are rapiers in the cupboard—shall we try to prick each other? '
The young gentleman in the easy-chair grew more and more uncomfortable. He was being made ridicul-
ous, and the man was laughing at him.
' I have heard of the tricks of foreign
duellists,' he
said rudely.
Lucian 's face flushed.
' That was ' a silly thing to say, my boy,' he said, not
unkindly. Most men would throw you out of the window for it. As it is, I'll let you oft easy. You'll find some gloves in that cupboard—get them out and take your coat off. I'm not an Englishman, as you just now reminded me in very pointed fashion, but I can use my fists. '
Then he took off his dressing-gown and rolled up his sleeves, and the youngster, who had spent many unholy hours in practising the noble art, looked at the poet's muscles with a knowing eye and realised that he was in for a very pretty scrap. He was a Uttle vain of his own
244
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
prowess, and fought for all he was worth, but at the end of five minutes he was a well-licked man, and at the expiration of ten was glad to be allowed to put on his coat and go.
Lucian flung his gloves into the comer of the room with a hearty curse. He stroked the satiny skin under which his muscle rippled smoothly. He had the arm of a blacksmith, and had always been proud of it. The remark of the drunken man came back to him. That was what they thought of him, was it? —that he was a mere slinger of ink, afraid of spilling his blood or suffering discomfort for the courage of his convictions? Well, they should see. England had gone mad with
the lust of blood and domination, and after all he was not her son. He had discharged whatever debt he owed her. To the real England, the true England that had fallen on sleep, he would explain everything, when the awakening came. It would be no crime to shoulder a rifle and strap a bandolier around one's shoulders in order to help the weak against the strong. He had fought with his pen, taking what he beheved to be the right and honest course, in the endeavour to convert
people who would not be converted, and who regarded his efforts as evidences of enmity. Very well: there seemed now to be but one straight path, and he would take it.
It was remembered afterwards as a great thing in Lucian's favour that he made no fuss about his next step. , He left London very quietly, and no one knew that he was setting out to join the men whom he honestly believed to be fighting for the best principles of liberty and freedom.
CHAPTER
XXXI
When the war broke out, Saxonstowe and his wife, after nearly three years of globe-trotting, were in Natal, where they had been studying the conditions of native labour. Saxonstowe, who had made himself well acquainted with the state of affairs m South Africa, knew that the coming struggle would be long and bitter
He and his wife entered into a discussion as to which they were to do: stay there, or return to England.
Sprats knew quite well what was in Saxonstowe s mind, and she unhesitatingly declared for South Africa. Then Saxonstowe, who had a new book on hand, put his work aside, and set the wires going, and within a few hours had been appointed special correspondent ot one of the London newspapers, with the prospect of hard
work and exciting times before him. Saxonstowe, ' And what am I to do? ' inquired Lady
inward thankfukiess that he was a rich man.
Before they knew where they were. Lord and Lady Saxonstowe were shut up in Ladysmith, and for one
of them at least there was not so much to do as he had anticipated, for there became little to record but the story of hope deferred, of gradual starvation, and ot death and disease. But Sprats worked double tides, unflinchingly and untiringly, and ahnost forgot that she had a husband who chafed because he could not get more than an occasional word over the wires to England.
At the end of the siege she was as gaunt as a far-travelled gypsy, and as brown, but her courage was as great as ever and her resolution just as strong. One day she received an ovation from a mighty concourse that sent
and answered her own question
* There wih be sick and wounded— m plenty, she said. * I shall organise a field-hospital,' and she went to work with great vigour and spent her husband's money with
before he could reply.
246
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
her, frightened and trembling, to shelter; when she emerged into the light of day again it was only to begin
reorganising her work in preparation for still more ardu- ous duties. The tide of war rolled on northwards, and Sprats followed, picking up the bruised and shattered jetsam which it flung to her. She had never indulged in questionings or speculations as to the rights or wrongs of the war. Her first sight of a wounded man had aroused all the old mothering instinct in her, and because she had no baby of her own she took every
man, Boer or Briton, into her arms and mothered him.
wounded
CHAPTER XXXII
A HUDDLED mass of fugitives—men, women, children, horses, cattle—crowded together in the dry bed of a river, seeking shelter amongst rocks and boulders and under shelving banks, subjected continually to a hurri- cane of shot and shell, choked by the fumes of the exploding Lyddite, poisoned by the stench of blood, saturated all through with the indescribable odour of death. Somewhere in its midst, caged like a rat, but still sulkily defiant, the peasant general fingered his
switch as he looked this way and that and saw no further chance of escape. In the distance, calmly waiting the inevitable end, the little man with the weather-beaten face and the grey moustaches hstened to the never- ceasing roar of his cannon demanding insistently the word of surrender that must needs come.
Saxonstowe, lying on a waterproof sheet on the floor of his tent, was writing on a board propped up in front of him. All that he wrote was by way of expressing his wonder, over and over again, that Cronje should hold out so long against the hell of fire which was playing in and around his last refuge. He was trying to realise what must be going on in the river bed, and the thought made him sick. Near him, writing on an upturned box, was another special correspondent who shared the
tent with him; outside, poHshing tin pannikins because he had nothing else to do, was a Cockney lad whom these two had picked up in Ladysmith and had attached as body-servant. He was always willing and always cheerful, and had a trick of singing snatches of popular songs in a desultory and disconnected way. His raucous voice came to them under the booming of the guns.
' Ow, 'ee's little but 'ee's wise, 'Ee's a terror for 'is size,
247
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
An' 'ee does not hadvertise: Do yer, Bobs? '
* What a voice that chap has ! ' said Saxonstowe's companion. 'It's like a wheel that hasn't been oiled for months! '
* Will yer kindly put a penny in my little tambourine, For a gentleman in khaki ordered sou-outh? '
chanted the poUsher of tin pans.
' They have a saying in Yorkshire, ' remarked Saxon-
stowe, ' to the effect that it's a poor heart that never
248
rejoices. '
' This chap must have a good
'un, then,' said the
other. Give us a pipeful of tobacco, will' Saxonstowe? Lord! will those guns never stop ?
' For the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady, Are sisters hunder their skins,'
you,
sang the henchman.
* Will our vocalist never stop? ' said Saxonstowe,
handing over his pouch. ' He seems as unconcerned as if he were on a Bank Holiday. '
* We wos as 'appy as could be, that dye, —' Dahn at the Welsh 'Arp, which is 'Endon
The raucous voice broke off suddenly; the close- cropped Cockney head showed at the open flap of the
tent. sir,' said the
' Beg pardon, Cockney
'
but I
voice,
fink there's somethin' 'appened, sir—guns is dyin' orf,
sir. '
Saxonstowe and his fellow scribe sprang to their feet.
The roar of the cannon was dying gradually away, and it suddenly gave place to a strange and an awful silence.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 249
Saxonstowe walked hither and thither about the bed of the river, turning his head jerkily to right and left.
'It's a shambles! — a shambles! — a shambles! he kept repeating. He shook his head and then his body as if he wanted to shake off the impression that was fast
stamping itself ineffaceably upon him. A shambles !
j
He pulled himself together and looked around him. It seemed to him that earth and sky were blotted out
he said again. , -, , -,
u-
in blood and fire, and that the smell of death had wrapped him so closely that he would never breathe freely again. Dead and dying men were everywhere. Near him rose a pile of what appeared to be freshly slaughtered meat—it was merely the result of the burst- ing of a Lyddite shell amongst a span of oxen. Near
him, too, stood a girl, young, not uncomely, with a bullet-wound showing in her white bosom from which she had just torn the bodice away; at his feet, amongst the boulders, were twisted, strange, grotesque shapes that had once been human bodies.
* There's a chap here that looks like an Enghshman,
j Saxonstowe turned, and found the man who shared his tent standing at his elbow, and pointed to a body
said a voice behind him. ,
i.
stretched out a yard or two away— the body of a well- formed man who had fallen on his side, shot through
his face half hidden in his arm-pit; near him, within reach of the nerveless fingers that had torn out a divot of turf in his last
and statuesque in death, caught the sunlight that straggled fitfully through the smoke-clouds which still
the heart. He lay as if asleep,
moment's spasmodic feeling for something to clutch at, lay his rifle: round his rough serge jacket was clasped a bandolier well stored with cartridges. His broad- brimmed hat had fallen off, and half his face, very white
curled over the bed of the river.
* Looks like an Englishman,' repeated
the special * Look at his hands, too—he hasn't
correspondent.
handled a rifle very long, I'm thinking. '
250
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
with perfunctory interest—there were so many dead men lying all about
in the dead man's face woke a chord in his memory : he went nearer and bent over him. His
Saxonstowe glanced
at the body
him. Something
brain was sick and dizzy with the horrors of the blood
and the stink of the slaughter. winked his eyes rapidly.
He stood up again, and
' No!
be—of course it can't be. What should Lucian be doing here? Of course it's' not he—it's mere imagina-
' No, no ! ' he heard himself saying. !
tion—mere im-ag-in-a-tion ' ' Here, hold up, old chap !
said his companion, pull- ing out a flask. ' Take a nip of that. Better? Hallo
—what's going on there? '
He stepped on a boulder and gazed in the direction
of a wagon round which some commotion was evident. Saxonstowe, without another glance at the dead man, stepped up beside him.
He saw a roughly built, rugged-faced man, wrapped in a much-worn overcoat that had grown green with age, stepping out across the plain, swishing at the herbage with a switch which jerked nervously in his hand. At his side strode a muscular-looking woman, hard of feature, brown of skin—a peasant wife in a faded skirt and a crumpled sun-bonnet. Near them marched a tall British officer in khaki; other Boers and
British, a group of curious contrasts, hedged them
down from the boulder. thank God! '
It can't
round.
' That's Cronje,' said the special correspondent,
stepped
The conquered was on his way to the conqueror.
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II.
At the end of two years, the doctor to whose care Haidee had been entrusted called Lucian into his private room one day and told him that he had grave news to communicate. His patient, he said, was dying—slowly,
But there was more than that: before her death she would recover her reason. She would probably recall everything that had taken place; it was more than possible that she would have painfully clear
but very surely.
recollections of the scene, whatever it might be, that had immediately preceded her sudden loss of sanity. It was but right, said the doctor, that Mr. Damerel should know of this, but did Mr. Damerel wish to be with his wife when this development occurred? It might be a pain- ful experience, and death must soon follow it. It was for Mr. Damerel to decide. Lucian decided on the instant. He had carried an image of Haidee in his mind for two years, and it had become fixed on his mental vision with such firmness that he could not think of her as anything but what he imagined her to be. He told the doctor that he would wish to know as soon as his
wife regained her reason —it was his duty, he said, to be with her. After that, every visit to the private asylum was made with anxious wonder if the tortured brain had cleared. —
It was not until the following spring two and a half years after the tragedy of the Bristol—that Lucian saw Haidee. He scarcely knew the woman to whom they took him. They had deluged him with warnings as to the change in her, but he had not expected to find her a
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 233
grey-haired, time-worn woman, and he had difficulty in preserving his composure when he saw her. He did not know it, but her reason had returned some time before, and she had become fully cognisant of her surroundings and of what was going to happen. More than that, she had asked for a priest and had enjoyed ghostly consola- tion. She gazed at Lucian with a curious wistfulness,
and yet there was something strangely
sullen in her
manner.
* I wanted to see you,' she said, after a time. ' I
know I'm going to die very soon, and there are things I want to say. I remember all that happened, you know. Oh yes, it's quite clear to me now, but somehow it doesn't trouble me—I was mad enough when I did it. '
' Don't speak of that,' he said. ' Forget it all. '
She shook her head.
' Never mind,' she went on. ' What I wanted to say
was, that I'm sorry that—well, you know. '
Lucian gazed at her with a sickening fear creeping
closely round his heart. He had forced the truth away
from him: he was to hear it at last from the lips of a
dying woman.
* You were to blame, though,' she said presently.
' You ought not to have let me go alone on his yacht or to the Highlands. It was so easy to go wrong there. '
Lucian could not control a sharp cry.
' Don't! ' he said, ' don't! You don't know what you're saying. It can't be that—that you wrote the truth in that letter? It was—hallucination. '
She looked at him out of dull eyes.
' I want you to say you forgive me,' she said. ' The priest —he said I ought to ask your forgiveness. '
Lucian bowed his head.
' Yes,' he said, ' I forgive all you wish. Try not to
think of it any more. '
He was saying over and ovei to himself that she was
still disordered of mind, that the sin she was confessing was imaginary; but deeper than his insistence on this lay a dull consciousness that he was hearing the truth.
234
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
He stood watching her curiously. She suddenly looked up at him, and he saw a strange gleam in her eyes.
' After all,' she said, half spitefully, ' you came between him and me at the beginning. '
Lucian never saw his wife again. A month later she was dead. All the time of the burial service he was thinking that it would have been far better if she had never recovered her reason. For two years he had cherished a dream of her that had assumed tender and pathetic tones. It had become a part of him; the ugly reality of the last grim moments of her life stood out in violent contrast to its gentleness and softness. When the earth was thrown upon the coffin, he was wondering at the wide difference which exists between the real and the unreal, and whether the man is most truly blessed who walks amongst stern verities or dreams amidst the
poppy-beds of illusion. One thing was certain : the face of truth was not always beautiful, nor her voice always soothing to the ear.
XXX
After Haidee's death Lucian left Paris, and during the rest of the spring and summer of that year went wander-
autumn.
unwonted activity.
CHAPTER
ing hither and thither about Europe.
this time in a state of quiescence; he lounged from one place to another, faintly interested and lazily amused. He was beginning to be a little bored by life, and a little tempted to drift with its stream. It was in this frame of mind that he returned to London in the following
There, soon after his return, he sprang into
It was on the very eve of the outbreak of the war in South Africa. Men were wondering what was going
His mind was at
Some, clearer of vision than their fellows, saw that nothing but war would solve the problem which
to happen.
had assumed vast proportions
because of the vacillating poUcy of a weak Government of twenty years before; the Empire was going to pay now, with millions of its treasure and thousands of its men, for the fatal error which had brought the name of
in the Transvaal and given the Boers a false notion of English strength and character.
Others were all for a policy of smoothing things over, for spreading green boughs over pitfalls — not that any one should fall into them, but in order to make believe that the pitfalls were not there. Others again, of a breed that
England into contempt
islands, advocated, not without success, a policy of surrender to everybody and everything. There was much talking at street comers and in the market-place; much angry debate and acrimonious discussion. Men began to be names, and few took the trouble to meantime, events
has but lately sprung into existence in these
labelled by new
understand each
developed as inevitable consequence always develops them in such situations. Amidst the chattering of tiny voices the thunders of war burst loud and clear.
other. In the 235
and strange intricacies
236
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
Fond as he was of insisting on his ItaHan nationality, he was passionately
devoted to England and the English, and had a great admiration for the history and traditions of the country
Lucian was furious with indignation.
There had once been a question in his mind as to whether he should write in English or in Italian—he had elected to serve England for many reasons, but chiefly because he recognised her greatness Like all Italians, he loved her for what she had done for Greece and for Italy. England and Liberty were synonymous names; of all nations in the world, none had made for freedom as
England had. His blood had leapt in his veins many a time at the thought of the thousand and one great things she had done, the mighty battles she had fought for truth and liberty; he had drunk in the notion from boyhood that England stood in the very vanguard of the army of deliverance. And now she was sending out her armies, marshalling her forces, pouring out her money like water, to crush a tiny folk, a nation of farmers, a sturdy, simple- minded race, one of the least amongst the peoples of the
earth! He shook his head as if he had been asleep, and asked himself if the nation had suddenly gone mad with lust of blood. It was inconceivable that the England of his dreams could do this thing. He looked for her, and found her nowhere. The streets were hot all day with the tramping of armed men. The first tidings of reverse filled the land with the old savage
determination to fight things out to the end, even though all the world should range itself on the other side.
Lucian flung all his feelings of rage, indignation, sorrow, and infinite amazement into a passionate sonnet which appeared next morning in large type, well leaded and spaced, in the columns of a London daily newspaper that favoured the views of the peace-at-any-price party. He followed it up with others. At first there was more sorrow and surprise than anything else in these admoni- tions; but as the days went on their tone altered. He
had endeavoured to bring the giant to his senses by an
of his adoption.
and beheved in her destiny.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
237
appeal to certain feelings which the giant was too much engaged to feel at that moment; eliciting no response, he became troublesome, and strove to attract the giant's attention by pricking him with pins. The giant paid small attention to this; he looked down, saw a small thing hanging about his feet with apparently mischievous intentions, and calmly pushed it away. Then Lucian began the assault in dead earnest. He could dip his pen in vitriol with the best of them, and when he realised that the giant was drunk with the lust of blood he fell upon him with fury. The vials of poetic wrath had
never been emptied of such a flood of righteous anger since the days wherein Milton called for vengeance upon the murderers of the Piedmontese.
It is an ill thing to fight against the prevalent temper of a nation. Lucian soon discovered that you may kick and prick John Bull for a long time with safety to your- self, because of his good nature, his dislike of bothering about trifles, and his natural sluggishness, but that he always draws a line somewhere, and brings down a heavy fist upon the man who crosses it. He began to find people fighting shy of his company; invitations became less in number; men nodded who used to shake hands; strong things were said in newspapers; and he was warned by friends that he was carrying things too far.
' Endeavour,' said one man, an acquaintance of some years' standing, for whose character and abilities he had a great regard, ' endeavour to get some accurate sense of the position. You are blackguarding us every day with your sonorous sonnets as if we were cut-throats and thieves going out on a murdering and marauding expedi- tion. We are nothing of the sort. We are a great nation, with a
engaged in a very difficult task. The war is bringing us together like brothers —out of its blood and ashes there will spring an Empire such as the world has never seen. You are belittling everything to the level of Hooliganism. '
' What is it but Hooliganism? ' retorted Lucian. ' The
very painful sense of responsibility,
238
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
most powerful nation in the world seizing one of the weakest by the throat ! '
' It is nothing of the sort/ said the other. ' You know it is your great curse, my dear Lucian, that you never get a clear notion of the truth. You have a trick of seeing
as you think they ought to be; you will not see them as they are. Just because the Boers happen to be numerically small, to lead a pastoral life, and to have gone into the desert like the Israelites of old, you have brought that far too powerful imagination of yours to bear upon them, and have elevated them into a class with the Swiss and the ItaHans, who fought for their country. '
' What are the Boers fighting for? ' asked Lucian.
' At present to grab somebody else's property,' returned the other. ' Don't get sentimental about them. After all, much as you love us, you're only half an Englishman, and you don't understand the English feel- ing. Are the English folk not suffering, and is a Boer widow or a Boer orphan more worthy of pity than a Yorkshire lass whose lad is lying dead out there, or a Scottish child whose father will never come back again? '
Lucian swept these small and insignificant details aside
things
with some impatience.
* You are the mightiest nation the world has ever
seen,' he said. ' You have a past—such a past as no other people can boast. You have a responsibility because of that past, and at present you have thrown all sense of it away, and are behaving like the drunken brute who rises gorged with flesh and wine, and yells for blood. This is an England with vine-leaves in her hair —it is not the England of Cromwell. '
* Ithank God it is not! ' said the other man with heartfelt reverence. ' We wish for no dictatorship here. Come, leave off slanging us in this bloodthirsty fashion, and try to arrive at a sensible view of things. Turn your energies to a practical direction—write a new romantic play for Harcourt, something that will cheer us in these dark days, and give the money for bandages
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 239
and warm socks and tobacco for poor Tommy out at the front. He isn't as picturesque —so it's said—as Brother Boer, but he's a man after all, and has a stomach. '
But Lucian would neither be cajoled nor chaffed out of his role of prophet. He became that most objection- able of all things — the man who believes he has a mes- sage, and must deliver it. He continued to hurl his philippics at the British public through the ever-ready
and the man in the street, who is not given to the drawing of fine dis-
columns of the peace-at-any-price paper,
tinctions, called him a pro-Boer.
reality, was not a pro-Boer—he merely saw the artistry of the pro-Boer position. He remembered Byron's atti- tude with respect to Greece, and a too generous instinct had led him to compare Mr. Kruger to Cincinnatus. The man in the street knew nothing of these things, and
Lucian, in strict
cared less. It seemed to him that
after all, nothing but an ink-slinger, a blooming poet, was slanging the quarter of a million men who were hurrying to Table Bay as rapidly as the War Office could get them there. To this sort of thing the man in the street objected. He did not care if Lucian's instincts were all on the side of the weaker party, nor was it an excuse that Lucian himself, in the matter of strict nation- ality, was an Italian. He had chosen to write his poems in England, said the man in the street, and also in the English language, and he had made a good thing out of it too, and no error, and the best thing he could do now was to keep a civil tongue in his head, or, rather, pen in his hand. This was no time for the cuckoo to foul the nest wherein he had had free quarters for so long.
The opinion of the man in the street is the crystallised common-sense of England, voiced in elementary lan- guage. Lucian, unfortunately, did not know this, and he kept on firing sonnets at the heads of people who, without bluster or complaint, were already tearing up their shirts for bandages. The man in the street read them, and ground his teeth, and waited for an oppor- tunity. That came when Lucian was ill-advised enough
Lucian, who was,
240
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
to allow his name to be printed in large letters upon the placard of a great meeting whereat various well-inten-
to protest against a war which had been forced upon the nation, and from which it was then impossible to draw back with either safety or honour. Lucian was still in the clouds; still thinking of Byron at Missolonghi; still harping upon the undoubted but scarcely pertinent facts
that England had freed slaves, slain giants, and waved her flag protectingly over all who ran to her for help. The foolishness of assisting at a public meeting whereat the nation was to be admonished of its wickedness in daring to assert itself never occurred to him. He was still the man with the message.
He formed one of a platform party of whom it might safely have been said that every man was a crank, and every woman a faddist. He was somewhat astonished and a little perplexed when he looked around him, and realised that his fellow-protestants were not of the sort wherewith he usually foregathered; but he speedily became interested in the audience. It had been intended to restrict admission to those well-intentioned folk who desired peace at any price, but the man in the street had placed a veto upon that, and had come in large numbers, and with a definite resolve to take part in the proceedings. The meeting began in a cheerful
tioned but somewhat thoughtless persons proposed
fashion, and ended in one dear to the English heart. The chairman was listened to with some forbearance and patience; a lady was allowed to have her say because she was a woman. It was a sad inspiration that led the chairman to put Lucian up next;
a still sadder one to refer to his poetical exhortations to the people. The sight of Lucian, the fashionably attired, dilettante, dreamy-eyed poet, who had lashed and pricked the nation whose blood was being poured out like water, and whose coffers were being depleted at a rapid rate, was too much for the folk he essayed to address. They knew him and his recent record. At the first word they rose as one man, and made for the
and vivacious
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 241
platlorm. Lucian and the seekers after peace were obliged to run, as rabbits run to their warrens, and the enemy occupied the position. Somebody unfurled a large flag, and the entire assemblage joined in singing Mr. Kipling's invitation to contribute to the tambourine
fund.
In the school of life the teacher may write many
lessons with the whitest chalk upon the blackest black- board, and there will always be a child in the corner who will swear that he cannot see the writing. Lucian could not see the lesson of the stormed platform, and he continued his rhyming crusade and made enemies by the miUion. He walked with closed eyes along a road literally bristling with bayonets: it was nothing but the good-natured English tolerance of a poet as being more or less of a lunatic that kept the small boys of the Strand from going for him. Men at street comers made remarks upon him which were delightful to over- hear: it was never Lucian's good fortune to overhear them. His nose was in the air.
He heard the truth at last from that always truthful person, the man in liquor. In the smoking-room of his club he was encountered one night by a gentleman
fashion, and whose natural patriotism glowed and scintillated around him
who had dined in too generous
He met Lucian face to face, and he stopped and looked him up and down with a fine
with equal generosity.
and eminently natural scorn.
* Mr. Lucian Damerel,' he said, with an only slightly
articulation; ' Mr. Lucian Damerel —the gentleman who spills ink while better men spend blood. ' Then he spat on the ground at Lucian's feet, and moved away with a sneer and a laugh.
interrupted
The room was full of men. They all saw, and they all heard. No one spoke, but every one looked at
Lucian. He knew that the drunken man had voiced the prevalent sentiment. He looked round him, with- out reproach, without defiance, and walked quietly
Q
242
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
trom the room and the house. He had suddenly real- ised the true complexion of things.
Next morning, as he sat over a late breakfast in his rooms, he was informed that a young gentleman who would give no name desired earnestly to see him. He was feeling somewhat bored that morning, and he bade his man show the unknown one in. He looked up from his coffee to behold a very young gentleman upon whom the word subaltern was written in very large letters, whose youthful face was very grim and earnest, and who was obviously a young man with a mission. He pulled himself up in stiff fashion as the door closed upon him, and Lucian observed that one hand evi-
dently grasped something his back.
which was concealed behind
' Mr. Lucian Damerel? ' the young gentleman with polite interrogation.
said,
Lucian bowed and looked equally interrogative. His visitor glowered upon him.
' I have come to tell you that you are a damned scoundrel, Mr. Lucian Damerel,' he said, ' and to thrash you within an inch of your beastly life! '
Lucian stared, smiled, and rose lazily from his seat.
The visitor displayed a cutting-whip, brandished it, and advanced as seriously as if he were on parade. Lucian met him, seized the cutting-whip in one hand and his assailant's collar in the other, disarmed him, shook him, and threw him lightly into an easy-chair, where he lay gasping and surprised. Lucian hung the cutting-whip on the wall. He looked at his visitor with a speculative gaze.
' What shall I do with you, young sir? ' he said. ' Throw you out of the window, or grill you on the fire, or merely kick you downstairs? I suppose you
thought that because I happen to be what your lot call " a writin' feller," there wouldn't be any spunk in me, eh? '
The visitor was placed in a strange predicament. He had expected the sweet savour of groans and tears
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
243
a muscleless, flabby ink-and-parchment thing: this man had hands which could grip Hke steel and
frorrn
Moreover, he was cool—he actually sat down again and continued his breakfast.
iron.
* I hope I didn't squeeze your throat too much,' said Lucian politely.
' I have a nasty trick of forgetting
If you feel shaken, help yourself to a brandy and soda, and then
that my hands are abnormally developed.
tell me what's the matter. '
The youth shook his head hopelessly.
' Y—you have insulted the Army ! ' he stammered at
last.
* Of which, I take it, you are the self-appointed
Well, I'm afraid I don't plead guilty, because, you see, I know myself rather better than you
champion.
know me. But you came to punish me? Well, again, you see you can't do that. Shall I give you satisfaction of some sort? There are pistols in that cabinet —shall we shoot at each other across the table? There are rapiers in the cupboard—shall we try to prick each other? '
The young gentleman in the easy-chair grew more and more uncomfortable. He was being made ridicul-
ous, and the man was laughing at him.
' I have heard of the tricks of foreign
duellists,' he
said rudely.
Lucian 's face flushed.
' That was ' a silly thing to say, my boy,' he said, not
unkindly. Most men would throw you out of the window for it. As it is, I'll let you oft easy. You'll find some gloves in that cupboard—get them out and take your coat off. I'm not an Englishman, as you just now reminded me in very pointed fashion, but I can use my fists. '
Then he took off his dressing-gown and rolled up his sleeves, and the youngster, who had spent many unholy hours in practising the noble art, looked at the poet's muscles with a knowing eye and realised that he was in for a very pretty scrap. He was a Uttle vain of his own
244
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
prowess, and fought for all he was worth, but at the end of five minutes he was a well-licked man, and at the expiration of ten was glad to be allowed to put on his coat and go.
Lucian flung his gloves into the comer of the room with a hearty curse. He stroked the satiny skin under which his muscle rippled smoothly. He had the arm of a blacksmith, and had always been proud of it. The remark of the drunken man came back to him. That was what they thought of him, was it? —that he was a mere slinger of ink, afraid of spilling his blood or suffering discomfort for the courage of his convictions? Well, they should see. England had gone mad with
the lust of blood and domination, and after all he was not her son. He had discharged whatever debt he owed her. To the real England, the true England that had fallen on sleep, he would explain everything, when the awakening came. It would be no crime to shoulder a rifle and strap a bandolier around one's shoulders in order to help the weak against the strong. He had fought with his pen, taking what he beheved to be the right and honest course, in the endeavour to convert
people who would not be converted, and who regarded his efforts as evidences of enmity. Very well: there seemed now to be but one straight path, and he would take it.
It was remembered afterwards as a great thing in Lucian's favour that he made no fuss about his next step. , He left London very quietly, and no one knew that he was setting out to join the men whom he honestly believed to be fighting for the best principles of liberty and freedom.
CHAPTER
XXXI
When the war broke out, Saxonstowe and his wife, after nearly three years of globe-trotting, were in Natal, where they had been studying the conditions of native labour. Saxonstowe, who had made himself well acquainted with the state of affairs m South Africa, knew that the coming struggle would be long and bitter
He and his wife entered into a discussion as to which they were to do: stay there, or return to England.
Sprats knew quite well what was in Saxonstowe s mind, and she unhesitatingly declared for South Africa. Then Saxonstowe, who had a new book on hand, put his work aside, and set the wires going, and within a few hours had been appointed special correspondent ot one of the London newspapers, with the prospect of hard
work and exciting times before him. Saxonstowe, ' And what am I to do? ' inquired Lady
inward thankfukiess that he was a rich man.
Before they knew where they were. Lord and Lady Saxonstowe were shut up in Ladysmith, and for one
of them at least there was not so much to do as he had anticipated, for there became little to record but the story of hope deferred, of gradual starvation, and ot death and disease. But Sprats worked double tides, unflinchingly and untiringly, and ahnost forgot that she had a husband who chafed because he could not get more than an occasional word over the wires to England.
At the end of the siege she was as gaunt as a far-travelled gypsy, and as brown, but her courage was as great as ever and her resolution just as strong. One day she received an ovation from a mighty concourse that sent
and answered her own question
* There wih be sick and wounded— m plenty, she said. * I shall organise a field-hospital,' and she went to work with great vigour and spent her husband's money with
before he could reply.
246
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
her, frightened and trembling, to shelter; when she emerged into the light of day again it was only to begin
reorganising her work in preparation for still more ardu- ous duties. The tide of war rolled on northwards, and Sprats followed, picking up the bruised and shattered jetsam which it flung to her. She had never indulged in questionings or speculations as to the rights or wrongs of the war. Her first sight of a wounded man had aroused all the old mothering instinct in her, and because she had no baby of her own she took every
man, Boer or Briton, into her arms and mothered him.
wounded
CHAPTER XXXII
A HUDDLED mass of fugitives—men, women, children, horses, cattle—crowded together in the dry bed of a river, seeking shelter amongst rocks and boulders and under shelving banks, subjected continually to a hurri- cane of shot and shell, choked by the fumes of the exploding Lyddite, poisoned by the stench of blood, saturated all through with the indescribable odour of death. Somewhere in its midst, caged like a rat, but still sulkily defiant, the peasant general fingered his
switch as he looked this way and that and saw no further chance of escape. In the distance, calmly waiting the inevitable end, the little man with the weather-beaten face and the grey moustaches hstened to the never- ceasing roar of his cannon demanding insistently the word of surrender that must needs come.
Saxonstowe, lying on a waterproof sheet on the floor of his tent, was writing on a board propped up in front of him. All that he wrote was by way of expressing his wonder, over and over again, that Cronje should hold out so long against the hell of fire which was playing in and around his last refuge. He was trying to realise what must be going on in the river bed, and the thought made him sick. Near him, writing on an upturned box, was another special correspondent who shared the
tent with him; outside, poHshing tin pannikins because he had nothing else to do, was a Cockney lad whom these two had picked up in Ladysmith and had attached as body-servant. He was always willing and always cheerful, and had a trick of singing snatches of popular songs in a desultory and disconnected way. His raucous voice came to them under the booming of the guns.
' Ow, 'ee's little but 'ee's wise, 'Ee's a terror for 'is size,
247
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
An' 'ee does not hadvertise: Do yer, Bobs? '
* What a voice that chap has ! ' said Saxonstowe's companion. 'It's like a wheel that hasn't been oiled for months! '
* Will yer kindly put a penny in my little tambourine, For a gentleman in khaki ordered sou-outh? '
chanted the poUsher of tin pans.
' They have a saying in Yorkshire, ' remarked Saxon-
stowe, ' to the effect that it's a poor heart that never
248
rejoices. '
' This chap must have a good
'un, then,' said the
other. Give us a pipeful of tobacco, will' Saxonstowe? Lord! will those guns never stop ?
' For the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady, Are sisters hunder their skins,'
you,
sang the henchman.
* Will our vocalist never stop? ' said Saxonstowe,
handing over his pouch. ' He seems as unconcerned as if he were on a Bank Holiday. '
* We wos as 'appy as could be, that dye, —' Dahn at the Welsh 'Arp, which is 'Endon
The raucous voice broke off suddenly; the close- cropped Cockney head showed at the open flap of the
tent. sir,' said the
' Beg pardon, Cockney
'
but I
voice,
fink there's somethin' 'appened, sir—guns is dyin' orf,
sir. '
Saxonstowe and his fellow scribe sprang to their feet.
The roar of the cannon was dying gradually away, and it suddenly gave place to a strange and an awful silence.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 249
Saxonstowe walked hither and thither about the bed of the river, turning his head jerkily to right and left.
'It's a shambles! — a shambles! — a shambles! he kept repeating. He shook his head and then his body as if he wanted to shake off the impression that was fast
stamping itself ineffaceably upon him. A shambles !
j
He pulled himself together and looked around him. It seemed to him that earth and sky were blotted out
he said again. , -, , -,
u-
in blood and fire, and that the smell of death had wrapped him so closely that he would never breathe freely again. Dead and dying men were everywhere. Near him rose a pile of what appeared to be freshly slaughtered meat—it was merely the result of the burst- ing of a Lyddite shell amongst a span of oxen. Near
him, too, stood a girl, young, not uncomely, with a bullet-wound showing in her white bosom from which she had just torn the bodice away; at his feet, amongst the boulders, were twisted, strange, grotesque shapes that had once been human bodies.
* There's a chap here that looks like an Enghshman,
j Saxonstowe turned, and found the man who shared his tent standing at his elbow, and pointed to a body
said a voice behind him. ,
i.
stretched out a yard or two away— the body of a well- formed man who had fallen on his side, shot through
his face half hidden in his arm-pit; near him, within reach of the nerveless fingers that had torn out a divot of turf in his last
and statuesque in death, caught the sunlight that straggled fitfully through the smoke-clouds which still
the heart. He lay as if asleep,
moment's spasmodic feeling for something to clutch at, lay his rifle: round his rough serge jacket was clasped a bandolier well stored with cartridges. His broad- brimmed hat had fallen off, and half his face, very white
curled over the bed of the river.
* Looks like an Englishman,' repeated
the special * Look at his hands, too—he hasn't
correspondent.
handled a rifle very long, I'm thinking. '
250
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
with perfunctory interest—there were so many dead men lying all about
in the dead man's face woke a chord in his memory : he went nearer and bent over him. His
Saxonstowe glanced
at the body
him. Something
brain was sick and dizzy with the horrors of the blood
and the stink of the slaughter. winked his eyes rapidly.
He stood up again, and
' No!
be—of course it can't be. What should Lucian be doing here? Of course it's' not he—it's mere imagina-
' No, no ! ' he heard himself saying. !
tion—mere im-ag-in-a-tion ' ' Here, hold up, old chap !
said his companion, pull- ing out a flask. ' Take a nip of that. Better? Hallo
—what's going on there? '
He stepped on a boulder and gazed in the direction
of a wagon round which some commotion was evident. Saxonstowe, without another glance at the dead man, stepped up beside him.
He saw a roughly built, rugged-faced man, wrapped in a much-worn overcoat that had grown green with age, stepping out across the plain, swishing at the herbage with a switch which jerked nervously in his hand. At his side strode a muscular-looking woman, hard of feature, brown of skin—a peasant wife in a faded skirt and a crumpled sun-bonnet. Near them marched a tall British officer in khaki; other Boers and
British, a group of curious contrasts, hedged them
down from the boulder. thank God! '
It can't
round.
' That's Cronje,' said the special correspondent,
stepped
The conquered was on his way to the conqueror.
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