The Burning Spear: Being the Experiences of Mr. John Lavender in the Time of War

Aware that she was being talked of Blink continued to be torn between the desire to wag her tail and to growl. Unable to make up her mind, she sighed heavily and fell on her side against her side against her master’s legs.

“Wonderful with sheep, too,” said Mr. Lavender; “at least, she would be if they would let her… You should see her with them on the Heath. They simply can’t bear her.”

“You will hear from me again,” said the nephew sourly.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Lavender. “I shall be glad of a proof; it is always safer, I believe.”

“Good morning,” said the nephew.

Blink, who alone perceived the dark meaning in these words, seeing him move towards the door began to bark and run from side to side behind him, for all the world as if he had been a flock of sheep.

“Keep her off!” said the nephew anxiously. “Keep her off. I refuse to be bitten again.”

“Blink!” called Mr. Lavender in some agony. Blink, whose obedience was excessive, came back to him at once, and stood growling from under her master’s hand, laid on the white hair which flowed back from her collar, till the nephew’s footsteps had died away. “I cannot imagine,” thought Mr. Lavender, “why she should have taken exception to that excellent journalist. Perhaps he did not smell quite right? One never knows.”

And with her moustachioed muzzle pressed to his chin Mr. Lavender sought for explanation in the innocent and living darkness of his dog’s eyes…

On leaving Mr. Lavender’s the nephew forthwith returned to the castle in Frognal, and sought his aunt.

“Mad as a March hare, Aunt Rosie; and his dog bit me.”

“That dear doggie?”

“They’re dangerous.”

“You were always funny about dogs, dear,” said his aunt soothingly. “Why, even Sealey doesn’t really like you.” And calling to the little low white dog she quite failed to attract his attention. “Did you notice his dress. The first time I took him for a shepherd, and the second time – ! What do you think ought to be done?”

“He’ll have to be watched,” said the nephew. “We can’t have lunatics at large in Hampstead.”

“But, Wilfred,” said the old lady, “will our man-power stand it? Couldn’t they watch each other? Or, if it would be any help, I could watch him myself. I took such a fancy to his dear dog.”

“I shall take steps,” said the nephew.

“No, don’t do that. I’ll go and call on the people, next door. Their name is Scarlet. They’ll know about him, no doubt. We mustn’t do anything inconsiderate.”

The nephew, muttering and feeling his calf, withdrew to his study. And the old lady, having put on her bonnet, set forth placidly, unaccompanied by her little white dog.

On arriving at the castle embedded in acacias and laurustinus she asked of the maid who opened:

“Can I see Mrs. Scarlet?”

“No,” replied the girl dispassionately; “she’s dead.”

“Mr. Scarlet, then?”

“No,” replied the girl, “he’s a major.”

“Oh, dear!” said the old lady.

“Miss Isabel’s at home,” said the girl, who appeared, like so many people in time of war, to be of a simple, plain-spoken nature; “you’ll find her in the garden.” And she let the old lady out through a French window.

At the far end, under an acacia, Mrs. Sinkin could see the form of a young lady in a blue dress, lying in a hammock, with a cigarette between her lips and a yellow book in her hands. She approached her thinking, “Dear me! how comfortable, in these days!” And, putting her head a little on one side, she said with a smile: “My name is Sinkin. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

The young lady rose with a vigorous gesture.

“Oh, no! Not a bit.”

“I do admire some people,” said the old lady; “they seem to find time for everything.”

The young lady stretched herself joyously.

“I’m taking it out before going to my new hospital. Try it,” she said touching the hammock; “it’s not bad. Will you have a cigarette?”

“I’m afraid I’m too old for both,” said the old lady, “though I’ve often thought they must be delightfully soothing. I wanted to speak to you about your neighbour.”

The young lady rolled her large grey eyes. “Ah!” she said, “he’s perfectly sweet.”

“I know,” said the old lady, “and has such a dear dog. My nephew’s very interested in them. You may have heard of him – Wilfred Sinkin – a very clever man; on so many Committees.”

“Not really?” said the young lady.

“Oh, yes! He has one of those heads which nothing can disturb; so valuable in these days.”

“And what sort of a heart?” asked the young lady, emitting a ring of smoke.

“Just as serene. I oughtn’t to say so, but I think he’s rather a wonderful machine.”

“So long as he’s not a doctor! You can’t think how they get on your nerves when they’re, like that. I’ve bumped up against so many of them. They fired me at last!”

“Really? Where? I thought they only did that to the dear horses. Oh, what a pretty laugh you have! It’s so pleasant to hear anyone laugh, in these days.”

“I thought no one did anything else! I mean, what else can you do, except die, don’t you know?”

“I think that’s rather a gloomy view,” said the old lady placidly. “But about your neighbour. What is his name?”

“Lavender. But I call him Don Pickwixote.”

“Dear me, do you indeed? Have you noticed anything very eccentric about him?”

“That depends on what you call eccentric. Wearing a nightshirt, for instance? I don’t know what your standard is, you see.”

The old lady was about to reply when a voice from the adjoining garden was heard saying:

“Blink! Don’t touch that charming mooncat!”

“Hush!” murmured the young lady; and seizing her visitor’s arm, she drew her vigorously beneath the acacia tree. Sheltered from observation by those thick and delicate branches, they stooped, and applying their eyes to holes in the privet hedge, could see a very little cat, silvery-fawn in colour and far advanced in kittens, holding up its paw exactly like a dog, and gazing with sherry-coloured eyes at Mr. Lavender, who stood in the middle of his lawn, with Blink behind him.

“If you see me going to laugh,” whispered the young lady, “pinch me hard.”

“Moon-cat,” repeated Mr. Lavender, “where have you come from? And what do you want, holding up your paw like that? What curious little noises you make, duckie!” The cat, indeed, was uttering sounds rather like a duck. It came closer to Mr. Lavender, circled his legs, drubbed itself against Blink’s chest, while its tapered tail, barred with silver, brushed her mouth.

“This is extraordinary,” they heard Mr. Lavender say; “I would stroke it if I wasn’t so stiff. How nice of you little moon-cat to be friendly to my play-girl! For what is there in all the world so pleasant to see as friendliness between a dog and cat!”

At those words the old lady, who was a great lover of animals, was so affected that she pinched the young lady by mistake.

“Not yet!” whispered the latter in some agony. “Listen!”

“Moon-cat,” Mr. Lavender was saying, “Arcadia is in your golden eyes. You have come, no doubt, to show us how far we have strayed away from it.” And too stiff to reach the cat by bending, Mr. Lavender let himself slowly down till he could sit. “Pan is dead,” he said, as he arrived on the grass and crossed his feet, “and Christ is not alive. Moon-cat!”

The little cat had put its head into his hand, while Blink was thrusting her nose into his mouth.

“I’m going to sneeze!” whispered the old lady, strangely affected.

“Pull your upper lip down hard, like the German Empress, and count nine!” murmured the young.

While the old lady was doing this Mr. Lavender had again begun to speak.

“Life is now nothing but explosions. Gentleness has vanished, and beauty is a dream. When you have your kittens, moon-cat, bring them up in amity, to love milk, dogs, and the sun.”

The moon-cat, who had now reached his shoulder, brushed the tip of her tail across his loose right eyebrow, while Blink’s jealous tongue avidly licked his high left cheekbone. With one hand Mr. Lavender was cuddling the cat’s head, with the other twiddling Blink’s forelock, and the watchers could see his eyes shining, and his white hair standing up all ruffled.

“Isn’t it sweet?” murmured the old lady.

“Ah! moon-cat,” went on Mr. Lavender, “come and live with us. You shall have your kittens in the bathroom, and forget this age of blood and iron.”

Both the old lady and the young were removing moisture from their eyes when, the voice of Mr. Lavender, very changed, recalled them to their vigil. His face had become strained and troubled.

“Never,” he was saying, “will we admit that doctrine of our common enemies. Might is not right gentlemen those who take the sword shall perish by the sword. With blood and iron we will ourselves stamp out this noxious breed. No stone shall be left standing, and no babe sleeping in that abandoned country. We will restore the tide of humanity, if we have to wade through rivers of blood across mountains of iron.”

“Whom is he calling gentlemen?” whispered the old lady.

But Blink, by anxiously licking Mr. Lavender’s lips, had produced a silence in which the young-lady did not dare reply. The sound of the little cat’s purring broke the hush.

“Down, Blink, down!” said Mr. Lavender.

“Watch this little moon-cat and her perfect manners! We may all learn from her how not to be crude. See the light shining through her pretty ears!”

The little cat, who had seen a bird, had left Mr. Lavender’s shoulder, and was now crouching and moving the tip of its tail from side to side.

“She would like a bird inside her; but let us rather go and find her some milk instead,” said Mr. Lavender, and he began to rise.

“Do you know, I think he’s quite sane,” whispered the old lady, “except, perhaps, at intervals. What do you?”

“Glorious print!” cried Mr. Lavender suddenly, for a journal had fallen from his pocket, and the sight of it lying there, out of his reach, excited him. “Glorious print! I can read you even from here. When the enemy of mankind uses the word God he commits blasphemy! How different from us!” And raising his eyes from the journal Mr. Lavender fastened them, as it seemed to his anxious listeners, on the tree which sheltered them. “Yes! Those unseen presences, who search out the workings of our heart, know that even the most Jingo among us can say, ‘I am not as they are!’ Come, mooncat!”

So murmuring, he turned and moved towards the house, clucking with his tongue, and followed by Blink.

“Did he mean us?” said the old lady nervously.

“No; that was one of his intervals. He’s not mad; he’s just crazy.”

“Is there any difference, my dear?”

“Why, we’re all crazy about something, you know; it’s only a question of what.”

“But what is his what?”

“He’s got a message. They’re in the air, you know.”

“I haven’t come across them,” said the old lady. “I fear I live a very quiet life – except for picking over sphagnum moss.”

“Oh, well! There’s no hurry.”

“Well, I shall tell my nephew what I’ve seen,” said the old lady. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” responded the young; and, picking up her yellow book, she got back into the hammock and relighted her cigarette.

VII

SEES AND EDITOR, AND FINDS A FARMER

Not for some days after his fall from the window did Mr. Lavender begin to regain the elasticity of body necessary to the resumption of public life. He spent the hours profitably, however, in digesting the newspapers and storing ardour. On Tuesday morning, remembering that no proof of his interview had yet been sent him, and feeling that he ought not to neglect so important a matter, he set forth to the office of the great journal from which, in the occult fashion of the faithful, he was convinced the reporter had come. While he was asking for the editor in the stony entrance, a young man who was passing looked at him attentively and said: “Ah, sir, here you are! He’s waiting for you. Come up, will you?”

Mr. Lavender followed up some stairs, greatly gratified at the thought that he was expected. The young man led him through one or two swing doors into an outer office, where a young woman was typing.

Mr. Lavender shook his head, and sat down on the edge of a green leather chair. The editor, resuming his seat, crossed his legs deferentially, and sinking his chin again on his chest, began:

“About your article. My only trouble, of course, is that I’m running that stunt on British prisoners – great success! You’ve seen it, I suppose?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Lavender; I read you every day.

The editor made a little movement which showed that he was flattered, and sinking his chin still further into his chest, resumed:

“It might run another week, or it might fall down to-morrow – you never can tell. But I’m getting lots of letters. Tremendous public interest.”

“Yes, yes,” assented Mr. Lavender, “it’s most important.”

“Of course, we might run yours with it,” said the editor. “But I don’t know; I think it’d kill the other. Still – ”

“I shouldn’t like – ” began Mr. Lavender.

“I don’t believe in giving them more than they want, you know,” resumed the editor. “I think I’ll have my news editor in,” and he blew into a tube. “Send me Mr. Crackamup. This thing of yours is very important, sir. Suppose we began to run it on Thursday. Yes, I should think they’ll be tired of British prisoners by then.”

“Don’t let me,” began Mr. Lavender.

The editor’s eye became unveiled for the Moment. “You’ll be wanting to take it somewhere else if we – Quite! Well, I think we could run them together. See here, Mr. Crackamup” – Mr. Lavender saw a small man like Beethoven frowning from behind spectacles – “could we run this German prisoner stunt alongside the British, or d’you think it would kill it?”

Mr. Lavender almost rose from his chair in surprise. “Are you – ” he said; “is it – ”

The small man hiccoughed, and said in a raw voice:

“The letters are falling off.”

“Ah!” murmured the editor, “I thought we should be through by Thursday. We’ll start this new stunt Thursday. Give it all prominence, Crackamup. It’ll focus fury. All to the good – all to the good. Opinion’s ripe.” Then for a moment he seemed to hesitate, and his chin sank back on his chest. “I don’t know,” he murmured, “of course it may – ”

“Please,” began Mr. Lavender, rising, while the small man hiccoughed again. The two motions seemed to determine the editor.

“That’s all right, sir,” he said, rising also; “that’s quite all right. We’ll say Thursday, and risk it. Thursday, Crackamup.” And he held out his hand to Mr. Lavender. “Good morning, sir, good morning. Delighted to have seen you. You wouldn’t put your name to it? Well, well, it doesn’t matter; only you could have written it. The turn of phrase – immense! They’ll tumble all right!” And Mr. Lavender found himself, with Mr. Crackamup, in the lobby. “It’s bewildering,” he thought, “how quickly he settled that. And yet he had such repose. But is there some mistake?” He was about to ask his companion, but with a distant hiccough the small man had vanished. Thus deserted, Mr. Lavender was in two minds whether to ask to be readmitted, when the four gentlemen with notebooks repassed him in single file into the editor’s room.

“My name is Lavender,” he said resolutely to the young woman. “Is that all right?”

“Quite,” she answered, without looking up.

Mr. Lavender went out slowly, thinking, “I may perhaps have said more in that interview than I remember. Next time I really will insist on having a proof. Or have they taken me for some other public man?” This notion was so disagreeable, however, that he dismissed it, and passed into the street.

On Thursday, the day fixed for his fresh tour of public speaking, he opened the great journal eagerly. Above the third column was the headline: OUR VITAL DUTY: BY A GREAT PUBLIC MAN. “That must be it,” he thought. The article, which occupied just a column of precious space, began with an appeal so moving that before he had read twenty lines Mr. Lavender had identified himself completely with the writer; and if anyone had told him that he had not uttered these sentiments, he would have given him the lie direct. Working from heat to heat the article finished in a glorious outburst with a passionate appeal to the country to starve all German prisoners.

Mr. Lavender put it down in a glow of exultation. “I shall translate words into action,” he thought; “I shall at once visit a rural district where German prisoners are working on the land, and see that the farmers do their duty.” And, forgetting in his excitement to eat his breakfast, he put the journal in his pocket, wrapped himself in his dust-coat and broad-brimmed hat, and went out to his car, which was drawn up, with Blink, who had not forgotten her last experience, inside.

“We will go to a rural district, Joe,” he said, getting in.

“Very good, sir,” answered Joe; and, unnoticed by the population, they glided into the hazy heat of the June morning.

“Well, what abaht it, sir?” said Joe, after they had proceeded for some three hours. “Here we are.”

Mr. Lavender, who had been lost in the beauty of the scenes through which he was passing, awoke from reverie, and said:

“I am looking for German prisoners, Joe; if you see a farmer, you might stop.”

“Any sort of farmer?” asked Joe.

“Is there more than one sort?” returned Mr. Lavender, smiling.

Joe cocked his eye. “Ain’t you never lived in the country, sir?”

“Not for more than a few weeks at a time, Joe, unless Rochester counts. Of course, I know Eastbourne very well.”

“I know Eastbourne from the inside,” said Joe discursively. “I was a waiter there once.”

“An interesting life, a waiter’s, Joe, I should think.”

“Ah! Everything comes to ‘im who waits, they say. But abaht farmers – you’ve got a lot to learn, sir.”

“I am always conscious of that, Joe; the ramifications of public life are innumerable.”

“I could give you some rummikins abaht farmers. I once travelled in breeches.”

“You seem to have done a great many things Joe.”

“That’s right, sir. I’ve been a sailor, a ‘traveller,’ a waiter, a scene-shifter, and a shover, and I don’t know which was the cushiest job. But, talking of farmers: there’s the old English type that wears Bedfords – don’t you go near ‘im, ‘e bites. There’s the modern scientific farmer, but it’ll take us a week to find ‘im. And there’s the small-’older, wearin’ trahsers, likely as not; I don’t think ‘e’d be any use to you.

“What am I to do then?” asked Mr Lavender.

“Ah!” said Joe, “‘ave lunch.”

Mr. Lavender sighed, his hunger quarelling with his sense of duty. “I should like to have found a farmer first,” he said.

“Well, sir, I’ll drive up to that clump o’beeches, and you can have a look round for one while I get lunch ready.

“That will do admirably.”

“There’s just one thing, sir,” said Joe, when his master was about to start; “don’t you take any house you come across for a farm. They’re mostly cottages o’ gentility nowadays, in’abited by lunatics.”

“I shall be very careful,” said Mr. Lavender.

“This glorious land!” he thought, walking away from the beech clump, with Blink at his heels; “how wonderful to see it being restored to its former fertility under pressure of the war! The farmer must be a happy man, indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of his own prosperity. How flowery those beans look already!” he mused, glancing at a field of potatoes. “Now that I am here I shall be able to combine my work on German prisoners with an effort to stimulate food production. Blink!” For Blink was lingering in a gateway. Moving back to her, Mr. Lavender saw that the sagacious animal was staring through the gate at a farmer who was standing in a field perfectly still, with his back turned, about thirty yards away.

“Have you – ” Mr. Lavender began eagerly; “is it – are you employing any German prisoners, sir?”

The farmer did not seem to hear. “He must,” thought Mr. Lavender, “be of the old stolid English variety.”

The farmer, who was indeed attired in a bowler hat and Bedford cords, continued to gaze over his land, unconscious of Mr. Lavender’s presence.

“I am asking you a question, sir,” resumed the latter in a louder voice. “And however patriotically absorbed you may be in cultivating your soil, there is no necessity for rudeness.”

The farmer did not move a muscle.

“Sir,” began Mr. Lavender again, very patiently, “though I have always heard that the British farmer is of all men least amenable to influence and new ideas, I have never believed it, and I am persuaded that if you will but listen I shall be able to alter your whole outlook about the agricultural future of this country.” For it had suddenly occurred to him that it might be a long time before he had again such an opportunity of addressing a rural audience on the growth of food, and he was loth to throw away the chance. The farmer, however, continued to stand with his hack to the speaker, paying no more heed to his voice than to the buzzing of a fly.

“You SHALL hear me,” cried Mr. Lavender, unconsciously miming a voice from the past, and catching, as he thought, the sound of a titter, he flung his hand out, and exclaimed:

“Grass, gentlemen, grass is the hub of the matter. We have put our hand to the plough” – and, his imagination taking flight at those words, he went on in a voice calculated to reach the great assembly of farmers which he now saw before him with their backs turned – “and never shall we take it away till we have reduced every acre in the country to an arable condition. In the future not only must we feed ourselves, but our dogs, our horses, and our children, and restore the land to its pristine glory in the front rank of the world’s premier industry. But me no buts,” he went on with a winning smile, remembering that geniality is essential in addressing a country audience, “and butter me no butter, for in future we shall require to grow our margarine as well. Let us, in a word, put behind us all prejudice and pusillanimity till we see this country of ours once more blooming like one great cornfield, covered with cows. Sirs, I am no iconoclast; let us do all this without departing in any way from those great principles of Free Trade, Industrialism, and Individual Liberty which have made our towns the largest, most crowded, and wealthiest under that sun which never sets over the British Empire. We do but need to see this great problem steadily and to see it whole, and we shall achieve this revolution in our national life without the sacrifice of a single principle or a single penny. Believe me, gentlemen, we shall yet eat our cake and have it.”

Mr. Lavender paused for breath, the headlines of his great speech in tomorrow’s paper dancing before his eyes: “THE CLIMACTERIC – EATS CAKE AND HAS IT – A GREAT CONCLUSION.” The wind, which had risen somewhat during Mr. Lavender’s speech, fluttered the farmer’s garments at this moment, so that they emitted a sound like the stir which runs through an audience at a moment of strong emotion.

“Ah!” cried Mr. Lavender, “I see that I move you, gentlemen. Those have traduced you who call you unimpressionable. After all, are you not the backbone of this country up which runs the marrow which feeds the brain; and shall you not respond to an appeal at once so simple and so fundamental? I assure you, gentlemen, it needs no thought; indeed, the less you think about it the better, for to do so will but weaken your purpose and distract your attention. Your duty is to go forward with stout hearts, firm steps, and kindling eyes; in this way alone shall we defeat our common enemies. And at those words, which he had uttered at the top of his voice, Mr. Lavender stood like a clock which has run down, rubbing his eyes. For Blink, roaming the field during the speech, and encountering quadruped called rabbit, which she had never seen before, had backed away from it in dismay, brushed against the farmer’s legs and caused his breeches to fall down, revealing the sticks on which they had been draped. When Mr. Lavender saw this he called out in a loud voice Sir, you have deceived me. I took you for a human being. I now perceive that you are but a selfish automaton, rooted to your own business, without a particle of patriotic sense. Farewell!”

VIII

STARVES SOME GERMANS

After parting with the scarecrow Mr. Lavender who felt uncommonly hungry’ was about to despair of finding any German prisoners when he saw before him a gravel-pit, and three men working therein. Clad in dungaree, and very dusty, they had a cast of countenance so unmistakably Teutonic that Mr. Lavender stood still. They paid little or no attention to him, however, but went on sadly and silently with their work, which was that of sifting gravel. Mr. Lavender sat down on a milestone opposite, and his heart contracted within him. “They look very thin and sad,” he thought, “I should not like to be a prisoner myself far from my country, in the midst of a hostile population, without a woman or a dog to throw me a wag of the tail. Poor men! For though it is necessary to hate the Germans, it seems impossible to forget that we are all human beings. This is weakness,” he added to himself, “which no editor would tolerate for a moment. I must fight against it if I am to fulfil my duty of rousing the population to the task of starving them. How hungry they look already – their checks are hollow! I must be firm. Perhaps they have wives and families at home, thinking of them at this moment. But, after all, they are Huns. What did the great writer say? ‘Vermin – creatures no more worthy of pity than the tiger or the rat.’ How true! And yet – Blink!” For his dog, seated on her haunches, was looking at him with that peculiarly steady gaze which betokened in her the desire for food. “Yes,” mused Mr. Lavender, “pity is the mark of the weak man. It is a vice which was at one time rampant in this country; the war has made one beneficial change at least – we are moving more and more towards the manly and unforgiving vigour of the tiger and the rat. To be brutal! This is the one lesson that the Germans can teach us, for we had almost forgotten the art. What danger we were in! Thank God, we have past masters again among us now!” A frown became fixed between his brows. “Yes, indeed, past masters. How I venerate those good journalists and all the great crowd of witnesses who have dominated the mortal weakness, pity. ‘The Hun must and shall be destroyed – root and branch – hip and thigh – bag and baggage man, woman, and babe – this is the sole duty of the great and humane British people. Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, roll up! Great thought – great language! And yet – ”