Part 35 (1/2)
Kruger's ultimatum, expected though it was, shook England as nothing had done since the Indian mutiny, but the tremour of national excitement presently gave way to a quiet, deep determination.
An almost Oriental luxury had gone far to weaken the fibre of that strong and opulent middle-cla.s.s who had been the backbone of England, the entrenched Philistines. The value of birth as a moral a.s.set which had a national duty and a national influence, and the value of money which had a social responsibility and a communal use, were unrealized by the many nouveaux riches who frequented the fas.h.i.+onable purlieus; who gave vast parties where display and extravagance were the princ.i.p.al feature; who ostentatiously offered large sums to public objects. Men who had made their money where copper or gold or oil or wool or silver or cattle or railways made commercial kings, supported schemes for the public welfare brought them by fine ladies, largely because the ladies were fine; and they gave substantial sums--upon occasion--for these fine ladies' fine causes. Rich men, or reputed rich men, whose wives never appeared, who were kept in secluded quarters in Bloomsbury or Maida Vale, gave dinners at the Savoy or the Carlton which the sc.r.a.pings of the aristocracy attended; but these gave no dinners in return.
To get money to do things, no matter how,--or little matter how; to be in the swim, and that swim all too rapidly was.h.i.+ng out the real people--that was the almost universal ambition. But still the real people, however few or many, in the time of trouble came quietly into the necessary and appointed places with the automatic precision of the disciplined friend of the state and of humanity; and behind them were folk of the humbler sort, the lower middle-cla.s.s, the labouring-man. Of these were the landpoor peer, with his sense of responsibility cultivated by daily life and duty in his county, on the one hand; the professional man of all professions, the little merchant, the sailor, the clerk and artisan, the digger and delver, on the other; and, in between, those people in the s.h.i.+res who had not yet come to be material and gross, who had old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas of the duty of the citizen and the Christian. In the day of darkness these came and laid what they had at the foot of the altar of sacrifice.
This at least the war did: it served as a sieve to sift the people, and it served as the solvent of many a life-problem.
Ian Stafford was among the first to whom it offered ”the way out,” who went to it for the solution of their own set problem. Suddenly, as he stood with Jasmine in the little room where so many lives were tossed into the crucible of Fate that morning, the newsboy's voice shouting, ”War declared!” had told him the path he must tread.
He had astonished the War Office by his request to be sent to the Front with his old arm, the artillery, and he was himself astonished by the instant a.s.sent that was given. And now on this October day he was on his way to do two things--to see whether Adrian Fellowes was keeping his promise, and to visit Jigger and his sister.
There had not been a week since the days at Glencader when he had not gone to the sordid quarters in the Mile End Road to see Jigger, and to hear from him how his sister was doing at the opera, until two days before, when he had learned from Lou herself what she had suffered at the hands of Adrian Fellowes. That problem would now be settled forever; but there remained the question of Jigger, and that must be settled, whatever the other grave problems facing him. Jigger must be cared for, must be placed in a position where he could have his start in life. Somehow Jigger was a.s.sociated with all the movements of his life now, and was taken as part of the problem. What to do? He thought of it as he went eastward, and it did not seem easy to settle it.
Jigger himself, however, cut the Gordian knot.
When he was told that Stafford was going to South Africa, and that it was a question as to what he--Jigger--should now do, in what sphere of life his abnormally ”cute” mind must run, he answered, instantly.
”I'm goin' wiv y'r gryce,” he said. ”That's it--stryght. I'm goin' out there wiv you.”
Ian shook his head and smiled sadly. ”I'm afraid that's not for you, Jigger. No, think again.”
”Ain't there work in Souf Afriker--maybe not in the army itself, y'r gryce? Couldn't I have me chanct out there? Lou's all right now, I bet; an' I could go as easy as can be.”
”Yes, Lou will be all right now,” remarked Stafford, with a reflective irony.
”I ain't got no stiddy job here, and there's work in Souf Afriker, ain't they? Couldn't I get a job holdin' horses, or carryin' a flag, or cleanin' the guns, or nippin' letters about--couldn't I, y'r gryce? I'm only askin' to go wiv you, to work, same as ever I did before I was run over. Ain't I goin' wiv you, y'r gryce?”
With a sudden resolve Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder. ”Yes, you are going 'wiv' me, Jigger. You just are, horse, foot, and artillery.
There'll be a job somewhere. I'll get you something to do, or--”
”Or bust, y'r gryce?”
So the problem lessened, and Ian's face cleared a little. If all the difficulties perplexing his life would only clear like that! The babe and the suckling had found the way so simple, so natural; and it was a comforting way, for he had a deep and tender regard for this quaint, clever waif who had drifted across his path.
To-morrow he would come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger's face followed him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life--of life that mattered. Jigger would go out to ”Souf Afriker” with all his life before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life behind him, all mile-stones pa.s.sed except one.
So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and there took a train to Charing Cross. Here he was only a little distance away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian Fellowes; and with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in front of the station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the jostle and the crush. Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw Krool stealing along with a wide-awake hat well down over his eyes. Presently the sinister figure was lost in the confusion. It did not occur to him that perhaps Krool might be making for the same destination as himself; but the sight of the man threw his mind into an eddy of torturing thoughts.
The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was s.h.i.+ning on a moving ma.s.s of people, so many of whom were ghastly also--derelicts of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish and innocent woman whom they could entrap. Among them moved also the thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending their way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even the good, looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable. To-night, the crowd were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in their purposeless movements. People sauntered, jerked themselves forward, moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and nowhere; and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational rags.
Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook his head gravely at her. After all, she had a hard trade and it led nowhere--nowhere.
”Coming home with me, darling?” she added in response to his meditative look. Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to her blunted sense. ”Coming home with me--?”
Home! A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth pa.s.sed through Stafford's brain. Home--where the business of this poor wayfarer's existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the inner sanctuary! Home.... He shook the girl's hand from his elbow and hastened on.
Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word Home she used.... The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a corrosive acid. He had had no home since his father died years ago,--his mother had died when he was very young--and his eldest brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother's chair and in her place at table.
He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had longed for the Englishman's castle, for his own little realm of interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be.
The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all possibility. In far-off days it had been a.s.sociated with a vision in blue, with a face like a dresden-china shepherdess and hair like Aphrodite's. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the picture; and long evenings in the winter-time, when they two would read the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events in which his work had place; in which his gifts were found, shaping, influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard--he loved orchards--the hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs; and the fine grey and chestnut horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes; the smell of the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings; or the sting of the bracing January wind across the moors or where the woodc.o.c.k awaited its spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over now. He had seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert alone.