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

“Germans?” repeated Joe; “what Germans? Three blighters workin’ on the road, as English as you or me. Wot are you talkin’ about, sir?”

“What!” cried Mr. Lavender, “do you tell me they were not Germans?”

“Well, their names was Tompkins, ‘Obson, and Brown, and they ‘adn’t an ‘aitch in their ‘eads.”

“God be praised!” said Mr. Lavender. “I am, then, still an English gentleman. Joe, I am very hungry; is there nothing left?”

“Nothin’ whatever, sir,” replied Joe.

“Then take me home,” said Mr. Lavender; “I care not, for my spirit has come back to me.”

So saying, he rose, and supported by Joe, made his way towards the car, praising God in his heart that he had not disgraced his country.

IX

CONVERSES WITH A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR

“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, when they had proceeded some twenty miles along the road for home, “my hunger is excessive. If we come across an hotel, Joe, pull up.”

“Right-o, sir,” returned Joe. “‘Otels, ain’t what they were, but we’ll find something. I’ve got your coupons.”

Mr. Lavender, who was seated beside his chauffeur on the driving-seat, while Blink occupied in solitude the body of the car, was silent for a minute, revolving a philosophic thought.

“Do you find,” he said suddenly, “that compulsory sacrifice is doing you good, Joe?”

“It’s good for my thirst, sir,” replied Joe. “Never was so powerful thirsty in me life as I’ve been since they watered beer. There’s just ‘enough in it to tickle you. That bottle o’ Bass you would ‘ave ‘ad at lunch is the last of the old stock at ‘ome, sir; an’ the sight of it fair gave me the wind up. To think those blighters ‘ad it! Wish I’d known they was Germans – I wouldn’t ‘ave weakened on it.”

“Do not, I beg,” said Mr. Lavender, “remind me of that episode. I sometimes think,” he went on as dreamily as his hunger would permit, “that being forced to deprive oneself awakens one’s worst passions; that is, of course, speaking rather as a man than a public man. What do you think will happen, Joe, when we are no longer obliged to sacrifice ourselves?

“Do wot we’ve been doin all along – sacrifice someone else,” said Joe lightly.

“Be serious, Joe,” said Mr. Lavender.

“Well,” returned Joe, “I don’t know what’ll ‘appen to you, sir, but I shall go on the bust permanent.”

Mr. Lavender sighed. “I do so wonder whether I shall, too,” he said.

Joe looked round at him, and a gleam of compassion twinkled in his greenish eyes. “Don’t you worry, sir,” he said; “it’s a question of constitootion. A week’d sew you up.”

“A week!” said Mr. Lavender with watering lips, “I trust I may not forget myself so long as that. Public men do not go ‘on the bust,’ Joe, as you put it.”

“Be careful, sir! I can’t drive with one eye.”

“How can they, indeed?” went on Mr. Lavender; “they are like athletes, ever in training for their unending conflict with the national life.”

“Well,” answered Joe indulgently, “they ‘as their own kind of intoxication, too – that’s true; and the fumes is permanent; they’re gassed all the time, and chloroformed the rest.

“I don’t know to what you allude, Joe,” said Mr. Lavender severely.

“‘Aven’t you never noticed, sir, that there’s two worlds – the world as it is, and the world as it seems to the public man?”

“That may be,” said Mr. Lavender with some excitement. “But which is the greater, which is the nobler, Joe? And what does the other matter? Surely that which flourishes in great minds, and by their utterances is made plain. Is it not better to live in a world where nobody shrinks from being starved or killed so long as they can die for their kings and countries, rather than in a world where people merely wish to live?”

“Ah!” said Joe, “we’re all ready to die for our countries if we’ve got to. But we don’t look on it, like the public speakers, as a picnic. They’re a bit too light-’earted.”

“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, covering his ears, and instantly uncovering them again, “this is the most horrible blasphemy I have ever listened to.”

“I can do better than that, sir,” answered Joe. “Shall I get on with it?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, clenching his hands, “a public man shrinks from nothing – not even from the gibes of his enemies.”

“Well, wot abaht it, sir? Look at the things they say, and at what really is. Mind you, I’m not speakin’ particular of the public men in this country – or any other country; I’m speakin’ of the lot of ‘em in every country. They’re a sort of secret society, brought up on gas. And every now and then someone sets a match to it, and we get it in the neck. Look ‘ere, sir. Dahn squats one on his backside an’ writes something in ‘igh words. Up pops another and says something in ‘igher; an’ so they go on poppin’ up an’ squattin’ dahn till you get an atmosphere where you can’t breathe; and all the time all we want is to be let alone, and ‘uman kindness do the rest. All these fellers ‘ave got two weaknesses – one’s ideas, and the other’s their own importance. They’ve got to be conspicuous, and without ideas they can’t, so it’s a vicious circle. When I see a man bein’ conspicuous, I says to meself: ‘Gawd ‘elp us, we shall want it!’ And sooner or later we always do. I’ll tell you what’s the curse of the world, sir; it’s the gift of expressin’ what ain’t your real feeling. And – Lord! what a lot of us ‘ave got it!”

“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were almost starting from his head, “your words are the knell of poetry, philosophy, and prose – especially of prose. They are the grave of history, which, as you know, is made up of the wars and intrigues which have originated in the brains of public men. If your sordid views were true, how do you suppose for one minute that in this great epic struggle we could be consoled by the thought that we are ‘making history’? Has there been a single utterance of any note which has not poured the balm of those words into our ears? Think how they have sustained the widow and the orphan, and the wounded lying out in agony under the stars. ‘To make history,’ ‘to act out the great drama’ – that thought, ever kept before us, has been our comfort and their stay. And you would take it from us? Shame – shame!” repeated Mr. Lavender. “You would destroy all glamour, and be the death of every principle.”

“Give me facts,” said Joe stubbornly, “an’ you may ‘ave my principles. As to the other thing, I don’t know what it is, but you may ‘ave it, too. And ‘ere’s another thing, sir: haven’t you never noticed that when a public man blows off and says something, it does ‘im in? No matter what ‘appens afterwards, he’s got to stick to it or look a fool.”

“I certainly have not,” said Mr. Lavender. “I have never, or very seldom, noticed that narrowness in public men, nor have I ever seen them ‘looking fools’ as you rudely put it.”

“Where are your eyes, sir?” answered Joe; “where are your eyes? I give you my word it’s one or the other, though I admit they’ve brought camouflage to an ‘igh art. But, speaking soberly, sir, if that’s possible, public men are a good thing’ and you can ‘ave too much of it. But you began it, sir,” he added soothingly, “and ‘ere’s your hotel. You’ll feel better with something inside you.”

So saying, he brought the car to a standstill before a sign which bore the words, “Royal Goat.”

Mr. Lavender, deep sunk in the whirlpool of feeling which had been stirred in him by his chauffeur’s cynicism, gazed at the square redbrick building with bewildered eyes.

“It’s quite O. K.,” said Joe; “I used to call here regular when I was travellin’ in breeches. Where the commercials are gathered together the tap is good,” he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose. “And they’ve a fine brand of pickles. Here’s your coupon.”

Thus encouraged, Mr. Lavender descended from the car, and, accompanied by Blink, entered the hotel and sought the coffee-room.

A maid of robust and comely appearance, with a fine free eye, divested him of his overcoat and the coupon, and pointed to a table and a pale and intellectual-looking young man in spectacles who was eating.

“Have you any more beef?” said the latter without looking up.

“No, sir,” replied the maid.

“Then bring me the ham and eggs,” he added.

“Here’s another coupon – and anything else you’ve got.”

Mr. Lavender, whose pangs had leaped in him at the word “beef,” gazed at the bare bone of the beef-joint, and sighed.

“I, too, will have some ham and a couple of poached eggs,” he said.

“You can have ham, sir,” replied the maid, “but there are only eggs enough for one.”

“And I am the one,” said the young man, looking up for the first time.

Mr. Lavender at once conceived an aversion from him; his appearance was unhealthy, and his eyes ravened from behind the spectacles beneath his high forehead.