Impressions of a War Correspondent Part 6

How was it that no one seemed to be laughing and enjoying himself out of all the crowd? The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne seemed to belong to another planet. The listless languor of these girls did not at least obviously claim Transatlantic cousinship; the gaiety of a j.a.panese street seemed so remote as to belong to a planet of another system; and the seriousness seemed reflected in the faces of the great mediocracy sauntering along inside the railings or solemnly seated in the chairs with their faces turned carriagewards.

Here it did not seem the Dingy City; there was colour enough-bright splashes of colour, both colour in movement and colour from the rhododendron bushes, backgrounded with the fresh gra.s.s, that an artist was making a picture of over the way; it was not the Dingy City here. At least this was an oasis in it. But here, in this oasis, playground or pleasure-ground, the People of the Serious City was what was writ on their faces.

Five hours later the park was almost deserted, and the gleam of white shirt-front or tulle-foam was caught as a closed carriage pa.s.sed.

The old bachelor was asleep in his chair at an open window looking across the narrow street at the familiar sooty face of the house opposite.

"Good-night, Tom; I do hope it will be fine for to-morrow," the black-haired girl was saying at her door, holding in her hand the new hat she had been tr.i.m.m.i.n.g.

The Volunteer colonel was discussing Buller and port across the glittering dinner-field.

The little fair-haired boy had climbed softly out of his cot, and, going over to his mother's bed, whispered coaxingly, "Will 'oo let me sleep with 'oo, mummy?" and when he had nestled his head on her arm, "Now tell me the story how daddy died," and was asleep before the familiar story was finished.

Boer Prisoners.

XIX

THE CITY OF DUMB DISTANCES

I am sure there must be many to whom the idea occurs at such times of the year as this, at the end of the season, when people are scattering out of London, that friends are leaving whom we would like to have had the time to have seen before they went. How often, looking over the pages of one's address book, one says, "I wonder how it is I have not seen So-and-so for an age," and one feels that people we used to enjoy meeting, if they do not happen to move in the same orbit of metropolitan existence, are vanishing from our ken. They are being lost in the Limbo of long distances. An hour of Underground in very hot weather may give the remoteness of Styx-ferryage.

It would be nice even to be able to speak to one's friends who are not conveniently visitable. In other cities this is possible, but not here. The telephone service of an American town or a Norwegian village is a thing of which London has never got even sufficient sample-taste to realise what she is deprived of, or what she ought very reasonably to demand. There is no reason why London should remain telephonically deaf and dumb. There is nothing which strikes the visitor more forcibly, however, than the long-suffering patience of the Londoner. The exasperatingly slow, inefficient apology for a telephone service that would not be tolerated anywhere else is good enough for London. It is no excuse to plead in apology the great size of the City, when there is the example of New York before one, where there are more telephones, where they are cheaper, and where the average time to get into communication with another subscriber appears to be a third or a fourth of the time taken in London. It is only when one has had actual experience of a thoroughly telephoned town that one appreciates the convenience of it. Look what it means for saving time in shopping, doing business, making appointments, and speaking to one's friends. "I got a telephone put right into my room the day I arrived," said an American friend, "but the people I want to speak to most often don't seem to use them, and it is so darned slow getting on to those that do that now I am keeping a cab by the day; it is quicker in the end, and makes me swear less."

It will only be a matter of time, and that not so very far off, when wireless telegraphy will replace the telephone. The principle of sending messages in a multiplicity of keys, so that a message sent will only be received on the instrument keyed for it, has been established, and only requires practical working out. Until that time London will probably have to remain as deaf and dumb as it is.

As regards getting from one part to another, it is not a cheerful thing to contemplate that what should be the most agreeable way of traversing London-I mean the pathway of the river-should just now be closed, and while Mr. Yerkes looks out on it from his offices in the Hotel Cecil, Londoners have to look to him to see if he or Pierpont Morgan will not open it to them again. What a pleasant alternative from the asphyxiating Underground or the tortoise-moving omnibus would not a fast, comfortably fitted line of river steamers be! It seems inconceivable that, with such a waterway and such primitive and inadequate alternative means of travel, the people should stand its being closed. What a great, stimulating, suggestive pathway it is through the Dingy City! Coming from a dance early the other morning I walked along the Embankment, to see a carpet of blue and silver being laid along the river as if by the angels of the dawn; and at evening in ever-varying schemes of sometimes gorgeous colour a richer carpet is laid sunsetwards, while the smoke and dust exhalation of the City is glorified to an incense offering by the stained rose window to the west. At such times the Dingy City looks great, robed in vague organ-tones of colour. But you must no longer walk on that carpet, even though the angels have laid it for you; you must no longer see your city from that pathway; you must burrow homewards from your work in a sewer-pipe of stink, and deeper rabbit-warrens of burrowing are being prepared for you, and you have no Declaration of Independence that secures to you the undeniable right to breathe fresh air. Long-suffering, patient Londoner! To whom does the City belong, and the river? If you reward with honours the men who make beer or whisky for you, or supply you with cheap tea, or signalise themselves by successfully struggling against disease, there ought to be the inducement of honours and reward waiting for the man or men that would help the millions in their daily struggle with this plague of long distances. Is there no knight to champion the cause of the toilers of London and in earnest tackle this dragon problem of distances? That is left to enterprising Americans who come over from pure philanthropy (?) to help you. Three years of his life are spent by the average-lived Londoner in the Underground, who has to take a daily half-hour's journey in it to get to his business. A man with an office in the neighbourhood of the Stock Exchange and a dwelling-house in South Kensington will spend about four or five years of his life going to and fro. To an extent it is a necessary evil. We cannot transport ourselves by telegraph, but there are things that the people of the largest city in the world might reasonably expect. They might expect to have as good facilities for getting about as the people of the most progressive cities in the world; they might expect to have the power to speak when they will with the same quickness, cheapness, and facility as people of other cities. But there is a dull feeling of resigned apathy about them. They will not insist on making any one "get a move on" them to get these things done; will no more think of hustling themselves than a cab-horse in a growler hired by the hour.

If London may be considered the head-the brain of the Empire-the blood-circulation of that brain is surely of vital importance. When keen compet.i.tors seize every time-saving, labour-saving weapon as it is offered to help them in the conquest of trade, can we afford to do without them? The business methods of twenty years ago will not do for to-day, still less will they do for twenty years to come. The methods which our compet.i.tors are practising are what will tell, and they cannot be imitated and acquired in a hurry when their importance will become suddenly alarmingly apparent. I think the position is far more serious than the stay-at-home Englishman realises. Perhaps from these pa.s.sing years the future historian will get material for the opening chapters of his work on "British Trade: its Decline and Fall."

XX

THE LAND OF THE EVENING CALM

It is difficult to think this morning that it was only last evening I left London. Lying on one's back on a soft carpet of pine spirules on the slope of the hill, the deep green of the water in the harbour shows through the pine branches. There is a plumage of bracken around wonderful green feathers, that are rising on their slender stems from the thick brown carpet of nature's plush, which hushes one's footsteps through the wood and makes them noiseless, except when one treads on a crisp tory top. There is a delightful hush under this cool roof pillared by the brown tree-trunks, but it is not silence. There is a soft hum that comes ceaselessly to one's ear, sometimes anear, sometimes afar, from one knows not where, from bees, perhaps, busy amongst the hurts or honeysuckle just below. Up above a wood-pigeon keeps cooing that ceaseless question, or is it a question, or the plaint call of his pigeon heart for love? or has he lost his love, and croons a mourning for her? Distinct from and louder than the murmur of the bees is a rustling of the water from below where the outgoing tide from the river meets the water of the harbour; and mingled with that, one can just faintly catch the hushed sound of an occasional wave on the rocks. It is a holiday with the breakers, and the sea moves its fringe as gently as if fanning itself to sleep. The river winds around below, and down to its edge the hills are tree-covered-not there altogether with pines, but with rounded luxurious clumps of dark trees, recalling Dore's idea of a forest-they are exactly Dore's trees. It does not look from here as if the river went up farther, but around that bend is the deep green water called Drake's Pool. It was there that Admiral Drake, outnumbered and chased along the Irish coast by the Spanish fleet, hid from them. The Spaniards came into the harbour and searched around, but never thought there was an opening through the trees. And there Drake waited with his high-p.o.o.ped ships until they went away. Close to the trees that grow around the steep margin of the pool and always darken the green water, even in daytime, fishermen who go there at night to fish for conger tell that when the moon has been clouded at midnight they have seen the shapes of queer-looking ships, and on their high sterns the forms of men in outlandish costumes, sitting around drinking.

Right on the summit of this hill which commands the harbour is the Giant's Grave; and a propos of commanding the harbour, Napoleon I. knew of it, and had a plan for the invasion of Ireland, in which was included the idea of occupying this hill, from which he could command from the rear the forts at the harbour's mouth. He would have planted his guns on the Giant's Grave. We know little of the history of that giant, except that he carried off the wife of another giant who lived on the Great Island opposite, and held her here in his fastness amid the pine trees against all efforts to wrest her from him. A huge rock that he hurled back in one of these fights is still to be seen on the sh.o.r.e of Spike Island.

A twittering flutter of white and grey below me a few yards away. It is a rabbit-and now another. Their ears are c.o.c.ked, but they do not appear to notice me in the least. They hop about quite noiselessly on the brown carpet. The crowing of a c.o.c.k in the distance seems almost musical, and there is some insect in the tree above me that appears to be trying to give an imitation of a telegraph instrument. I wonder what these rabbits are saying to each other. They seem very alert and interested. Now a third appears on the scene. Two of them are beginning to play, at least I thought so at first-and I feel in this peaceful wood I should have left it at that, but having to recollect the heading of these chapters I have to record the fact that they are fighting. I never saw rabbits fight before, but they are fighting like mad. I now see, in fact, the origin of the expression making "the fur fly." The third is just skipping around watching intently with big round eyes and its ears erect-perhaps the third is timekeeper, or perhaps it is the story of the giants over again. The new-comer was getting the best of it. I am sorry now that I could not resist the temptation of taking a shot at them with my fountain pen. They fled instantly. Perhaps the little rabbit lady is glad-she may be licking the wounds of her Lancelot in their burrow a few yards away while he is telling her that he would have beaten the other fellow all right in the end if that darned fool hadn't thrown his fountain pen, while she agrees, as she works her little rabbit tongue soothingly, although privately she has her "doots."

How interesting it would be to be able to study the lives of all these little people in this wood! There are terrible weasels here who wage a sanguinary warfare against the rabbits-a guerilla war that no war correspondent I know of has yet got his pa.s.s for. The seagulls are beginning to talk now in a New York pitch of voice, and one can get an occasional gleam of their wings through the blue-green pine branches. I think it is their dinner-time when the tide goes out and spreads a table-strip of slob for them on the sh.o.r.e.

How thankful we ought to be to have such dear stupid neighbours as the English, who don't come in hordes of tourists to desecrate this delightful land! Those who love it with intimacy of knowledge-this wild coast with its rock fingers stretching into the Atlantic and harbours around which the trees nestle for shelter from the winter storms-the ruined castles with empty "magic cas.e.m.e.nts, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn"-own it still for their pleasure, moss-grown with history as vivid as the lichens on its rocks or ruins.

Perhaps from a sense of justice, our neighbours think the invasion of Cromwell's army was enough, and that we ought to be spared from something worse, so that the hordes rush off perspiring over the Continent and elsewhere, and just a few nice people come and come again to the South of Ireland, and say they like that cordial greeting that always is waiting for the Englishman personally, who only in the abstract is disliked. Then the Irish railways and hotel-keepers act in a very nice and gentlemanly fashion; the former do not force on the notice of the tourist hordes that a train leaves Euston or Paddington every evening which would land them here at 10.30 in the morning for a few shillings. The latter are quite content with the knowledge they have themselves that they possess now as comfortable and well-fitted-up hotels as any in the world.

A little old Irish lady was reduced to selling apples in the street. "Fresh apples, fresh apples!" she would call out; then, to herself, "I hope no one will hear me."

I do not know, indeed, whether we have to thank most our kind neighbours or the railway and hotel people for the blessing we enjoy in this Land of the Evening Calm that still keeps

"A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."

One fills one's lungs with the delicious air, aromatic with pine perfume, to send it out in a sigh of infinite content.

From across the water comes a sound of music; it is some one playing a cornet. The air the unseen musician is playing sounds familiar. He is only practising-learning-- Ye G.o.ds! Is there no place where one can get away from that air? But yet, does not it speak volumes for the remoteness of this harbourage of repose to realise that the unseen musician is only now learning "The Honeysuckle and the Bee"?

j.a.ps Entering Pekin.

XXI

WITH SOME TOILERS OF THE SEA

"Stop makin' a noise wid your face, man, and cook the spuds; 'tis time for dinner." Thus Tim to Mike, who had been expounding a theory of his on the wayward habits of mackerel. Tim occasionally comes out with quaint phrases worthy a wider audience. "Mr. Speaker, the right hon. member who has just been making a noise with his face on this amendment"-how would that sound?

There are three men in the boat, not including the writer-Tim, Mike, and Dennis-engaged in lobster-fishing. They have lived in her now six weeks from the time they left Baltimore; "doin' purty well, thank G.o.d," they admit. The fishing and the weather and the price all "purty fair." They get ten shillings a dozen for the lobsters, small or large, from the cutters that sail along the coast to collect them and take them to England, and they consider a couple of dozen lobsters a very good day's fishing. They don't get as good a price in the middle of the summer, however. They are going to stop the lobstering just now for the autumn mackerel-fishing, which they hope will be as good as the mackerel-fishing of last spring, which was the best for the past four years. The open boat, which they own in partnership, is a strongly built one about twenty-two feet long, with a lug and foresail of brown canvas and great flat stones for ballast. The whole outfit, including the lobster-pots, cost them twenty-five pounds. The pots have been set and baited with gurnet; during the two hours' interval we are anch.o.r.ed. A curious thing about the craft is the galley. On a spar which stretches from the bow to about four feet up the mast is stretched a piece of brown canvas just forward of the mast, on a flat stone some lumps of turf are burning, and under this canvas is spread the straw on which my friends sleep. Mike is now washing a prodigious quant.i.ty of potatoes in a large iron pot, "a grate crop of praties this year, but the salt water plays the divil with the keeping av them, like that," and he holds up one with a red mark on it in his gigantic paw. I kept wondering if they were really going to eat all these potatoes at one meal. They did, however, washed down with milk from a big tin jug which they pa.s.sed around. They make their own bread or griddle-cake, but that was to be taken with their tea for breakfast or supper. Tim is a teetotaler, and his two partners have a limit of three pints (of porter) when they are ash.o.r.e. They always go ash.o.r.e on Sundays, when two of them go to Ma.s.s, while the other minds the boat and the lobsters. Three great, simple, almost child-like giants they are, yet not without a certain natural courtesy-a core of genuine politeness within a rough rind.

It was great to see how they made that heavy boat move with their long oars, coming out of the harbour this morning; and yet they hardly ever eat any meat. Potatoes and milk are their chief diet; fish sometimes-"an' thin we has to sample the lobsters sometimes; it wouldn't do not to sample what we are daling in." They cooked one in honour of their visitor, who never tasted a better. Then they lit the pipe, which they smoked in turn, and soon it was time to pick up the pots. Three lobsters and a crawfish were the haul. What magnificent colour in the strong yet delicate armour of their sh.e.l.ls! Deep blue shaded into brown, mottled in yellow spots, with deep red at the joints. They were put into the big basket, which already contained over three dozen. What a terrible time the poor brutes must have there! Two or three weeks in this boat, probably the same time in the tank of the cutter, and a week or two more in another ash.o.r.e before they are eaten. I asked if they ever gave them any food, but found they never did. "One av them dies off an' on, and thin the others ate him, an' they are always atin' the small claws off each other." Talk of the lobster blushing because it saw the salad dressing; but ought it not to make a member of the S.P.C.A. blush to eat lobster mayonnaise? We set the brown sails to lay the pots again further along the coast. It is a glorious day, the wavelets dancing on the surface of the long Atlantic swell that heaves ponderously; for, as Tim remarked, "the adjacent parish wesht is Ameriky." A glorious translucent green under the shadow of the leaning sails, and beyond, under our lee, the line of breakers on the rocks, tapestried in the rich brown of autumnal seaweed, and above them, in more broken billows, fields that make the island called "Emerald."

While waiting after laying the pots again, the wind kept freshening, and heavier clouds in big battalions kept hurrying up from windward. The trio seem unanimous that we are in for a bit of a blow. Tim says 'tis going to be a nasty night, and we must go in somewhere, although night is the best time for their fishing. Only one jack-lobster out of all the pots this time. It was now blowing hard and beginning to rain, so, with one reef in, we started again. It was a ripping breeze; I knew of old how quickly the wind can rise along that coast. The last time I was in Baltimore-picturesque old place, with its ruined abbey and the memory of the sacking of it by Moorish pirates, and the carrying-off of the women from only the eighteenth century back-was when I sailed round in a half-decked 16-footer, designed by Watson. She was a great little boat, with a ton of lead on her keel. As I was nearing the harbour just such a breeze sprang up, and, being single-handed, I could not take in a reef, so had to carry on; right outside the harbour my foresail carried away, but I got in all right under the mainsail, and anch.o.r.ed alongside the Baroness Burdett-Coutts's yacht that was there at the time. I asked Tim about the money she had lent to the men there for buying fishing-boats. "Ah, thin, she's a good woman, G.o.d bless her; there's many rich or well-to-do men in Baltimore to-day through the means of her, an' ivery penny paid back-divil a penny av a bad debt."

Relief Of Pekin.

The smaller the boat the greater the delight of sailing; you get closer to things than in big boats. It is part of yourself, half in the sea and half in the air, and with the sea and breezes you play or fight. White sails standing patiently upright, waiting, and adown from over the hills comes along the breath of the wind, breathing across the mirror; gently, ripplingly, comes the wind to play, and would try to pa.s.s, but you catch it in your white wings-catch it and hold it, leaning over to its fleeing pa.s.sage, and press the trembling tiller-pulse, now throbbing with life, and luff as the boat darts forward in joy of possession of the wind, but she pa.s.ses, gently, gently up again with the tiller till she leaves the sails with the lingerage of a caress.

But more fun is the fight and tussle in that wonderful surface fighting-line between sea and wind, which laugh as they fight, blowing and buffeting, with you between and the little boat-part of you, now intensely alive and glad like you to be alive, to sing back to the wind any old song as she pa.s.ses her fingers through your hair.

One unique sensation of the almost uncanny mingling of the two elements I can never forget, when once, at daybreak, I went down into the Cave of the Winds under Niagara Falls; on along the slippery path, the spray streaming down the oilskins; within a few feet that shimmering, glistening wall of falling water, the sense of hearing gone in intoxication, of most musically thunderous noise. One seemed breathing water, so finely spray-saturated was the air. One seemed to have pa.s.sed the portals into a strange, eerie, watery world.

Every moment the wind came up, piping louder and louder, scudding across the now darkening water. The entrance to Oyster Haven was only half a mile on. It was too far to go to Kinsale. The Old Head was invisible in blue-grey mist.

How things find voice in music! I recollect in the climax of the fight at Elandslaagte, when the uproar of various sounds was simply terrific, from the shrill treble of the whimpering bullets to the trumpet-like whoop of the sh.e.l.ls as they arched overhead, to alight with a drum-boom and burst with a cymbal crash; the whole orchestra of battle was playing-it seemed that everyone must recognise the air-"The Ride of the Valkyrie;" and now the driving rain and the salt spindrift, the flapping of the leech of our brown sail, every note of accompaniment is being given to that great air that runs through Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, which the wind is singing louder and louder. Tim sits up well to windward, the tiller quivering in his hand, the rain beating on one side of his face, his beard blowing out from the other. Tim doesn't think what a good model for a Viking he makes just now. The real actual Viking must have been very little different in appearance from Tim.

We were not long in making that last half-mile, and dropped anchor close insh.o.r.e. At once on doing so the many advantages of the canvas cabin were apparent. The boat, riding head to wind, made the bow under the canvas quite snug. Mike blew the bellows on the smouldering sods of turf which had never quite gone out; it is true the eddying smoke resulting therefrom was smarting to the eyes, but the resulting hot tea was compensation. It was useless for me to try to explain that it would be a real pleasure for me to sleep outside in my waterproof-that it would make me dream of being outside Santiago in the trenches, or on the veldt. It was only a matter of which of the three-who all wanted to-should give up his berth on the straw. Dennis succeeded eventually. It was a bad night. It was snug and "comfy" inside on the straw as the boat cradled on the broken aftermath of swell. The rain played in sheets of notes on the flapping canvas, and from its edge wraiths of smoke shuddered off into the darkness; and, dropping off to sleep, I listened to the Storm moaning the air of the Waldstein to the ear of Beethoven.

THE END