Various

“ Old Schwartz rode over the bult on his lean veldt pony, his corduroys flapping in the wind and his veldt schoen barely resting in the stirrups. And the prospect pleased him. Not a roof-tree could he see except his own. The blue sheen on the scrub and the shimmer on the vlei grass gave an air of peace on a road untold that men have searched the world for since time was. Away on the slopes were some of his own cattle, and a herd of his own horses; several generations of mares, each with their foals, were galloping down to the pan for the evening. ”

“ She approached Nora, timidly.
‘Nora!’
Nora rose. Her face was stained with tears.
‘It’s all wrong,’ she said heavily—‘it’s all wrong. But—I give in. What I said was a lie. There is nothing else in the world that we could possibly do.’
And she rushed out of the room without another word. Connie looked wistfully after her. Nora’s pain in receiving had stirred in her the shamefaced distress in giving that lives in generous souls. ‘Why should I have more than they?’
She stole out after Nora. Ewen Hooper was left staring at the letter from his bankers, and trying to collect his thoughts. ”

“ Monseigneur. Wretchedly? Thou?
Beppo. Sometimes.
Monseigneur (tenderly) . Hungry?
Beppo. Hunger is nothing. But to be restless, dissatisfied; not often, but still sometimes. To feel oneself a beggar, an outcast, friendless; to be neither of the palace nor the hovel, yet to know oneself a part of each. In a word, Philippe, to feel oneself nothing; just the foam on the surface of the river, the bubble that breaks and vanishes even before the broad stream is aware of its existence.
Monseigneur. Thou hast such feelings? Thou?
Beppo. Sometimes. ”

“ Old Schwartz’s horse lolloped over the crisp red grass of the vlei, and a brace of Kuoorhaan, the scolding hens, rose with a whirr and a clatter that roused the old man from his dreams, and he pulled himself together to cross the slope to his farm. The sun was low over the veldt, and the light of fairyland was falling on the countryside, as he rode into the yards—past the sheep-kraals. There were geese under the willows picking at the water-cress in the fountain cut, and the boys were driving in the cows. ”

“ But since she and Nora had last met, something had happened. Some heat of feeling or of sympathy had fused in her the elements of being; so that a more human richness and warmth, a deeper and tenderer charm breathed from her whole aspect. Nora, though so much the younger, had hitherto been the comforter and sustainer of Connie; now for the first time, the tired girl felt an impulse—firmly held back—to throw her arms round Connie’s neck, and tell her own troubles. ”

“ For, as the days went by, I could not but perceive that Alice, the girl whose life I had saved, bestowed on me very kindly glances—glances in which I, though unskilled in such language, read something deeper and—shall I say?—sweeter than mere gratitude. To her kiss—if kiss indeed it was—given under the stress of great emotion, I did not attach importance. To do so would have been, in my opinion, both unchivalrous and fatuous. But, as between man and maid, there is a light in young eyes which can hardly be mistaken by even the most cold-blooded or most ignorant. ”

“ The light danced on Alice’s beady black eyes and arched brows, on her thin but very red lips, on the bright patch of colour in each cheek. She was more than ever like a Watteau sketch in black chalk, heightened with red, and the dress she wore, cut after the pattern of an eighteenth century sacque, according to an Oxford fashion of that day, fell in admirably with the natural effect. Connie had very soon taken off her tea-gown, loosened and shaken out her hair, and put on a white garment in which she felt at ease. Alice noticed, as Nora had done, that Connie was fast becoming a beauty ”

“ Thatch shapes into such slopes, too, it so canopies and rounds off gables, dormers, and porches, that for fitness and comeliness its motley is your hamlet’s only wear. And as patentees in their advertisements do, I urge ‘Reject all substitutes!’ and against metal roofs in particular, corrugated iron that basely counterfeits pantiles, I launch the curse of the rambler; for upon such hectic, crinkly awnings no lichen of loveliness ever gets hold. Let roof-tree and road-tree grow ‘in beauty side by side,’ as Mrs. Hemans’ family did, say I, and the wig of the cottage be blonde. ”

“ Behind the closely-drawn, heavily-embroidered curtains of his vast state-bed, lies the little Monseigneur, most desperately ill. Notwithstanding the gay and brilliant sunshine that floods the palace, in the open fireplace of Monseigneur’s bedchamber there is a blazing scented fire of logs piled; while all the windows, with their stained armorial bearings, and all the heavy tapestry hangings over the narrow doorways that lead to garde-robe and oratory and corridor, are mercilessly closed. ”

“ Connie laughed.
‘They’ll never have the chance. Who’ll ever attack England? If we had only something—something splendid, and not too far away!—to look back upon, as the Italians look back on Garibaldi—or to long and to suffer for, as the Poles long and suffer for Poland!’
‘We shall some day!’ said Nora, hopefully. ‘Mr. Sorell says every nation gets its turn to fight for its life. I suppose Otto Radowitz has been talking Poland to you?’
‘He talks it—and he lives it,’ said Connie, with emphasis. ”

“ The promised attack, however, did not develop for the next forty-eight hours, and during the whole of that time the battalion had to lie still and suffer such an inferno of bombardment, such a purgatory of bitter cold and driving rain, such a misery of knee-deep mud and crouching in painfully cramped positions, that at the end of the time they were openly praying for an attack, British or German, they did not care which, so long as it ended or even relieved the intolerable waiting. ”

“ Life itself climbs and descends a road-tree, I suppose—the tree of Ygdrasil; but there can be continual breaking forth into new boughs of living if one carries Spring on into Autumn, keeping pretty young in spite of the impertinences of time. Has there not been grafting of road-trees, budding of fertile young stems into lichened old branches of ways?
But road-trees are deciduous, too, boughs and twigs of them withering for lack of the sap of daily use; with some sense of pathos a rambler obtrudes upon the hush of lanes long left unmetalled, where the latest wheel-marks are wan. ”

“ Beppo. About the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the old. It does not matter so much for me; I am young and can bear it. But the old!—To be old is dreadful; but to be old and hungry, in autumn without a roof, without a fire in winter! If I were duke, Philippe, dost thou know what I would do? (As Monseigneur, lying back in the chair, feebly shakes his head.) In winter I would have all the old people here to live with me in the palace; feed them, and keep them warm. ”

“ If I am to keep neither my rank nor my clothes, if I am not to be treated with proper respect, I might as well be Beppo! I will not die! I will not! I will not!
Bishop. Monseigneur!
Monseigneur (leaning on his elbow, screams,) Lorrain! Lorrain! (And while the Bishop rises, Lorrain, the big man-at-arms, comes clanking in through the hangings from the corridor.)
Lorrain (hoarsely) . Monseigneur?
Monseigneur. Lorrain—listen! I have a duty for thee—at once!—a solemn duty!
Lorrain. Name it, Monseigneur. It shall be done.
Monseigneur (feverishly) . Lorrain—thou knowest Death, dost thou not? ”

“ We English no more became Latin then than Teutonic later; always we have gone our own ways. Between Newark and Nottingham the Fosse marches straight, a noble Roman superb and haughty, but the other road, the true Englishman, wends devious and unsystematic: it developed as the British Empire did, out of paths and lanes of trade and gossip: they never set out to be a main road or an empire at all.
Somewhere and sometime all roads end, as must this wandering gossip of road-trees. It is good to jog on the footpath way and hent the stile even in war-time ”

“ Some of the old legends remain in some of the old families, cherished by the women more than the men, as such things are the world over.
Thinking nothing of such things, old Schwartz had grown as the other Dutch, and his own veldt was all the world to him, so that as he came back from Bessie’s Dam to talk of the outer world, his own solitary farm, with the poplars of Lombardy growing on the dam where Julie had planted them, her first communion after they married, peace for a while came over his vexed mind. ”

“ The Punjab regiment tramped into Dera Ismail Khan in little brown detachments that crossed the wide pale desert to the jingle of mules and the rumble of transport carts, and encamped on a bare parade ground awaiting orders. The General commanding the Derajat Brigade had his orders by then for the great war, so that the cantonment knew yet one more change. The Punjab regiment was extraordinarily busy; all the paraphernalia wherewith each human being encumbers himself, multiplied by one thousand, had to be dealt with. ”

“ Fat and lazy, yet not without shrewd enterprise; plausible and intriguing, but keeping faith in much; charitable, good-natured, indulgent to little children, he was well known to every man, woman, and child in the throng, and those sacrificial men of war, about to set forth on their perilous way, would carry him with them in their memories as ‘not half a bad fellow, old Beli Ram.’
In an empty bungalow among the litter of packing-cases, one young bearer was weeping shamefacedly. ”

“ The club in the evenings was very gay, as though the fierceness of man was forged from bright metal. The comradeship was deep; ‘brothers in arms’ meant much to those soldier folk; the unspoken word was expressed in every handgrip, ‘Honorary member of my table, you give me orders, or take mine, but both serve King and Country—here’s luck to you.’ And when, on October 27, [209] the Punjab regiment went forth to the war of the world, the courtesy and the tremendous sentiment which the Army feels for the Army was written plain by the cantonment for the city to see. ”

“ My surest and most intimate knowledge of the Kaiser was gained, perhaps, from German and Austrian diplomatic and consular officials who were either included in the inner circle of his personal friends, or whose duties had been of a character to reveal to them the hidden springs and cogs of their master’s intricate machine of welt-politik. ”

“ Road-trees sprout hamlets, dwellings grouped in greenery as if they were clusters of acorns or hazel-nuts, and these often are ripe old places, turning brown as nuts and acorns do, and blest with beautiful baptisms, names that a rambler reads upon slanting sign-posts or over rustical post-office doors. ”

“ In an age when we are all being exhorted to economise it is refreshing to remember that an official in the Law Courts not so very long ago penetrated a large crowd on a London pavement and discovered George Pollock extended over a grating from which he was trying with an umbrella to extract a penny which an urchin in tears professed to have dropped down the abyss. ”

“ Constance Bledlow stepped out of the Bletchley train into the crowded Oxford station. Annette was behind her. As they made their way towards the luggage van, Connie saw a beckoning hand and face. They belonged to Nora Hooper, and in another minute Connie found herself taken possession of by her cousin. Nora was deeply sunburnt. Her colour was more garishly red and brown, her manner more trenchant than ever. At sight of Connie her face flushed with a sudden smile, as though the owner of the face could not help it. ”

“ When the regiment went to Somaliland my father was the Sahib’s orderly. My father is dead, but I am the orderly of the Sahib.’ Something more here than the vow taken on enlistment: some vow this of the heart’s own making. And in the camp a spirit stirring among the menials: a young sweeper, son of a line sweeper, salaaming low to his Memsahib, ‘I am known to all men of the regiment, I go with the regiment.’ Surely they go upward as they go onward, these armed hosts of men who lift such humble beings out of the dust of themselves? ”

“ Monseigneur. Good Beppo! Kiss me!
Beppo (tearfully) . Willingly! Beloved Philippe! (And while the boys affectionately embrace, to hide his emotion, the good Bishop [202] leaves them and disappears through the hangings out into the corridor. Then Beppo kneels lovingly at his brother’s feet.) And now it is my turn.
Monseigneur. To teach me?
Beppo. To cure thee, as I said I would.
Monseigneur. And how?
Beppo. Out there, in the sunshine. It has cured the thrushes, and why not thee?
Monseigneur (languidly) . Ah! Out there?
Beppo. It is the place I always go to, when I myself am feeling wretchedly. ”

“ The boys had shrunk back into the doorway, and Commandant Delarey was biting his beard, when a Cape cart came clattering up the courtyard to the stoep.
‘Here is mother,’ called Hermanus, and an old lady descended with many parcels and called out to them to help her, and came up the steps like a woman of forty rather than one of seventy. Small and dark and shrivelled and active, the black grapes on her head shaking and dancing, and her bead cape quivering.
‘Why, grandsons! come along and get my parcels, or you’ll get no fresh coffee. Why, what’s the matter, Hermanus! ”