after haidee’s death lucian left paris, and during the rest of the spring and summer of that year went wandering hither and thither about europe. his mind was at 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 autumn. there, soon after his return, he sprang into unwonted activity.
it was on the very eve of the outbreak of the war in south africa. men were wondering what was going to happen. some, clearer of vision than their fellows, saw that nothing but war would solve the problem which had assumed vast proportions and strange intricacies because of the vacillating policy 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 england into contempt 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 has but lately sprung into existence in these islands, advocated, not without success, a policy of surrender to everybody and everything. there was much talking at street corners and in the market-place; much angry debate and acrimonious discussion. men began to be labelled by new names, and few took the trouble to understand each other. in the meantime, events developed as inevitable consequence always develops them in such situations. amidst the chattering of tiny voices the thunders of war burst loud and clear.{236}
lucian was furious with indignation. fond as he was of insisting on his italian nationality, he was passionately devoted to england and the english, and had a great admiration for the history and traditions of the country of his adoption. 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 and believed in her destiny. 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 admonitions; but as the days went on their tone altered. he had endeavoured to bring the giant to his senses by an{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 yourself, 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 expedition. we are nothing of the sort. we are a great nation, with a very painful sense of responsibility, 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{238} 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 things 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 italians, 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 feeling. 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 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.’
‘i thank 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{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 r?le of prophet. he became that most objectionable of all things—the man who believes he has a message, and must deliver it. he continued to hurl his philippics at the british public through the ever-ready columns of the peace-at-any-price paper, and the man in the street, who is not given to the drawing of fine distinctions, called him a pro-boer. lucian, in strict reality, was not a pro-boer—he merely saw the artistry of the pro-boer position. he remembered byron’s attitude 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 cared less. it seemed to him that lucian, who was, 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 nationality, 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 language. 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 opportunity. that came when lucian was ill-advised enough{240} to allow his name to be printed in large letters upon the placard of a great meeting whereat various well-intentioned but somewhat thoughtless persons proposed 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 and vivacious 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{241} platform. 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 blackboard, 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 million. 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 corners made remarks upon him which were delightful to overhear: 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 who had dined in too generous fashion, and whose natural patriotism glowed and scintillated around him with equal generosity. he met lucian face to face, and he stopped and looked him up and down with a fine and eminently natural scorn.
‘mr. lucian damerel,’ he said, with an only slightly interrupted 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.
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, without reproach, without defiance, and walked quietly{242} from the room and the house. he had suddenly realised 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 evidently grasped something which was concealed behind his back.
‘mr. lucian damerel?’ the young gentleman said, with polite interrogation.
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{243} from a muscleless, flabby ink-and-parchment thing: this man had hands which could grip like steel and iron. moreover, he was cool—he actually sat down again and continued his breakfast.
‘i hope i didn’t squeeze your throat too much,’ said lucian politely. ‘i have a nasty trick of forgetting that my hands are abnormally developed. if you feel shaken, help yourself to a brandy and soda, and then 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 champion. well, i’m afraid i don’t plead guilty, because, you see, i know myself rather better than you 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 ridiculous, 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 off 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 little vain of his own{244} 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 corner 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 believed 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.