Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 37

"That is if you had eyes an' ears in your head."

Nicky-Nan swung about on her: but she rested a hand on either hip and was continuing. "'Naybours,' you said, sir? 'Naybours'?

Him accused by public talk for a German spy--"

"Hush, Mrs Climoe! Of all the Commandments, ma'am, the one most in lack of observance hereabouts, to my observation, is that which forbids bearing false witness against a neighbour. To a charitable mind that includes hasty witness."

"There's another, unless I disremember," snapped Mrs Climoe, "that forbids 'ee to covet your naybour's wife."

While Mr Hambly sought for a gentle reproof for this, Mrs Penhaligon, pale of face, rested a hand against her gate-post, and said she very gently but in a white scorn--

"What is this talk of naybours, quarrelin' or comfortin' or succourin' or bearin' witness? There be naybours, an'"--she pointed a finger at Mrs Climoe--"there be livers-by. Now stroll along, the lot of 'ee, and annoy somebody else that lives unprotected!"

She said it so quietly and decisively, standing motionless, that Lippity-Libby, coming around the corner of the lane with paste-pot and brush, and with a roll of bills tucked in his armpit, mistook the group for a chance collection of cheerful gossips. He drew up, lowered his pail, and began in a business-like way to slap paste upon the upper flap of a loft-door across the way, chatting the while over his shoulder.

"Good evenin', naybours! Now what (says you to yourselves) might I be carryin' here under my arm in the cool o' the day. Is it a Bye-Law? No, it is not a Bye-Law. Or is it a Tender? No, it is not a Tender. Or is it a Bankrup' Stock, or a Primrose Feet, or at the worst a Wesleyan Anniversary? Or peradventure is it a Circus? . . .

Sold again! 'Tis a Recruitin' Meetin', an' for Sat.u.r.day."

Having slapped on the paste, he unfolded a bill and eyed it critically.

"'YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT YOU.'--That's pretty good for Polpier, eh? Flatterin', one might almost say."

His cheerfulness held the group with their pa.s.sions arrested.

Nicky-Nan turned about and stared at the placard as Lippity-Libby smoothed it over the paste, whistling.

At that moment Un' Benny Rowett, hands in trouser-pockets, came dandering along. He, too, taking the geniality of every one for granted, halted, spread his legs wide and conned the announcement.

"Oh!" said he after a pause, wheeling about. "Still harpin' on they Germans? Well, Mr Hambly, sir, I don't know how it strikes you, but I'm sick an' tired of them dismal blackguards."

"I can't bear it," said Mrs Steele, walking to and fro in her drawing-room. She ceased wringing her handkerchief, and came to a halt confronting the Vicar, who stood moodily leaning an arm on the mantelshelf.

"I believe," he answered after a pause, "you would find it worse to bear in a month or so if I hadn't offered."

"Why didn't you consult me?"

"I wrote to the Bishop--"

"The 'Bishop!' Well . . . what did _he_ advise?"

"Oh, of course he temporised. . . . Yes, I know what you are going to say. My consulting him was a momentary throw-back of loyalty.

The official Churches--Roman Catholic, Greek, Anglican, the so-called Free--are alike out of it in this business. Men in England, France, Russia--Germany and Austria, too--are up against something that really matters."

"What can matter comparable with the saving of a soul?"

"Losing it, sweetheart; or, better still, forgetting it--just seeing your job and sticking it out. It is a long, long way to Tipperary, every Tommy knows; and what (bless him!) he neither knows nor recks about is its being a short cut to Heaven."

"Robert, will you tell me that our Faith is going down in this horrible business?"

"Certainly not, my dear. But I seem to see that the Churches are going down. After all, every Church--even the Church Catholic--is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Where I've differed from four out of five of my clerical brethren (oh, drat the professional lingo!)--from the majority of the clergy hereabouts, is that while they look on the Church and its formularies as something even more sacred than the Cross itself, I have believed in it as the most effective instrument for teaching the Cross." Mr Steele pulled a wry mouth. "At this moment I seem to be the bigger fool. They _may_ be right: the Church _may_ be worth a disinterested idolatry: but as a means to teach mankind the lesson of Christ it has rather patently failed to do its business. Men are not fools: or rather they _are_ fools, but not fools enough in the long-run to pay for being taught to be foolish. They pay us ministers of religion, Agatha, a tidy lot of money, if you take all Europe over: and we are not delivering the goods. In their present frame of mind they will soon be discovering that, for any use we are, they had better have saved the cash and put it into heavy artillery."

"All we have lived, worked, hoped for in this parish--we two, almost alone--"

"And now," said the Vicar ruefully, "I am leaving you quite alone.

Yes, you have a right to reproach me. . . . Old Pritchard, from St Martin's, will take the duty. His Vicar will be only too glad to get rid of him."

"Oh, don't let us talk of that silly old man!" said Mrs Steele impatiently. "And as for reproaches, Robert, I have only one for you--that you did this without consulting me."

"Yes, I know: but you see, Agatha--"

"No, I do not see." She faced him, her eyes swimming. "I might have argued a little--have cried a little. But why--oh, why, Robert?--did you deny me the pride to say in the end, 'Go, and G.o.d bless you'?"

The Recruiting Meeting was held in the Council Schoolroom, on Sat.u.r.day evening, at 7 o'clock. [Public meetings in Polpier are invariably fixed for Sat.u.r.day, that being the one week-night when the boats keep home.] Schoolmaster Rounsell and his daughter (back from her holiday) had decorated the room, declining outside a.s.sistance.

It was a rule of life with Schoolmaster Rounsell and his daughter to be very stiff against all outside a.s.sistance. They took the line that as State-employed teachers of the young,--that is to say, Civil Servants,--they deserved more social respect than Polpier habitually showed them. In this contention, to be sure, they were wholly right.

Their mistake lay in supposing that in this dear land of ours prejudice can be removed by official decree, or otherwise than by the slow possession of patience, tact, and address. Mr Rounsell, however, was less stiff than usual, since the Vicar had asked him to second a vote of thanks at the end of the meeting. He and his daughter spent a great part of the afternoon in arranging the platform and decorating the back wall with a Union Jack, two or three strings of cardpaper-flags that had not seen the light since Coronation Day, and a wall-map of Europe with a legend below it in white calico letters upon red Turkey twill,--"DO GOOD AND FEAR NOT."

It had served to decorate many occasions and was as appropriate to this as to any of them.

By 6.45 the room was crowded with an audience numbering two hundred and more. They sat very quietly in the odour of the evil-smelling oil lamps, expectant of oratory. For Squire Tresawna (who pleaded an attack of gout as an excuse for not attending) had not only a.s.sured the committee of his personal sympathy, but at his own cost had engaged a speaker recommended by a political a.s.sociation (now turned non-political) in London. There was promise of oratory, and every Cornish audience loves oratory.

In the Squire's absence Farmer Best took the chair. Punctually at seven o'clock he mounted the platform, followed by the orator from London (a florid gentleman in a frock-coat and dingy white waistcoat), the Vicar, Mr Hambly, Mr Pamphlett, Dr Mant, and Mr Rounsell. As they entered, Miss Rounsell, seated at the piano at the far end of the platform, struck the opening chords of "G.o.d Save the King." It seemed to take the audience by surprise: but they shuffled to their feet and, after a few bars, sang the anthem very creditably.

When they had settled themselves, Farmer Best opened the meeting.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Naybours all," he said,--"I don't suppose these here proceedin's will conclude much afore ten o'clock: after which it'll take me the best part of an hour to get home; an' what with one thing and another I doubt it'll be far short o' midnight afore my missus gets me to bed. Whereby, knowin' my habits, you'll see that I reckon this to be summat more than an ord'nary occasion: the reason bein', as you know, that pretty well the hull of Europe's in a state o' War: which, when such a thing happens, it behoves us.

I'll say no more than that, as Britons, it behoves us. It was once said by a competent observer that Britons never, never--if Miss Rounsell will oblige?"

This was a rehea.r.s.ed effect. Miss Rounsell, taking her cue, struck the key-board, and as Miss Charity Oliver (in the front row) testified next morning, "the effect was electric." All sprang to their feet and sang the chorus of _Rule, Britannia!_ till the windows shook.

"Thenk 'ee, friends," continued Farmer Best, as the tumult and the singers subsided. "There's no more to say but that most of 'ee's heard tell, in one way or another at some time of his life, of Armygeddon. Well, this here's _of_ it; an' if you ask my opinion o'

that fellow they call the Kaiser, I say I wouldn' sleep in his bed for a million o' money. And with these few remarks I will no longer stand between 'ee and Mr Boult, who is a speaker all the way from London, an' will no doubt give us a Treat an' persuade many of our young friends in front to join up."

Mr Boult arose amid violent applause. He pulled the lappels of his frock-coat together. He spoke, and from the first moment it was clear that he held at command all the tricks of the hired orator.

He opened with an anecdote from the life of President Garfield, and a sentimental application that made the Vicar wince. He went on to point out, not unimpressively, that Armageddon ("as you, sir, have so aptly and so strikingly termed it") had actually broken upon the world. Farmer Best, flattered by this acknowledgment of copyright in the word, smiled paternally.

"It has burst like a thunderstorm upon the fields of Belgium; but the deluge it discharges is a deluge of blood intermingled with human tears. And where, my friends, is Belgium? How far distant lie these trodden and wasted fields, these smoking villages, these harvests where men's bodies crush the corn and their blood pollutes the food they planted to sustain it? Listen: those fields lie nearer London than does your little village: men are dying--yes, and women and little children are being ma.s.sacred--far nearer London than you are peacefully sitting at this moment."

"Come!" thought the Vicar, "this fellow is talking sense after all, and talking it rather well." Mr Rounsell stood up and pointed out the positions of Liege and Polpier on the wall-map, and their relative distances from London. A moment later the Vicar frowned again as Mr Boult launched into a violent--and as it turned out, a lengthy--invective against the German Emperor; with the foulness of whose character and designs he had, it seemed, been intimately acquainted for a number of years. "Who made the War?" "Who had been planning it and spying for the opportunity to gratify his unbridled l.u.s.t of power?" "Who would stand arraigned for it before the awful tribunal of G.o.d?" &c. The answer was "the Kaiser," "the Kaiser,"

"the Kaiser Wilhelm"--Mr Boult p.r.o.nounced the name in German and threw scorn into it.

--"Which," mused the Vicar, "is an argument _ad invidiam_; and, when one comes to think of it, rather a funny one. The man is still talking sense, though: only I wish he'd talk it differently."

Then for a quarter of an hour Mr Boult traced the genesis of the War, with some ability but in special-pleader style and without a particle of fairness. He went on to say that he, personally, was not in favour of Conscription. [As a matter of fact he had spoken both for and against Compulsory Service on many public platforms.] He believed in the Voluntary Principle: and looking on the many young men gathered in the body of the hall, and more particularly at the back ["excellent material" he called them, too], he felt convinced there would be no hanging back that night; but to-morrow, or, rather, Monday, when he returned to London he would be able to report that the heart of Polpier was sound and fired with a resolve to serve our common country. Mr Boult proceeded to make the Vicar writhe in his seat by a jocular appeal to "the young ladies in the audience" not to walk-out with any young man until he had clothed himself in khaki.

He wound up with one of his most effective perorations, boldly enlisting John Bright and the Angel of Death; and sat down amid tumultous applause. It takes all sorts to make a world, and this kind of speech.

Farmer Best called upon the Vicar.

"I wish," said Mr Steele, "to add just a word or two to emphasise one particular point in Mr Boult's speech; or, rather, to put it in a somewhat different light. And I shall be brief, lest I spoil the general effect on your minds of his very powerful appeal.

"I address myself to the women in this room. . . . With _you_ the last word lies, as it rightly should. It is to _you_ that husband, son, brother, wooer, will turn for the deciding voice to say, 'Go, help to save England--and may G.o.d prosper and guard you'; because it is your heart that makes the sacrifice, as it is your image the man will carry away with him; because the England he goes to defend shapes itself in his mind as 'home,' as the one most sacred spot, though it be but a cottage, in which his imagination or his memory installs you as queen; in which your presence reigns, or is to reign.