CHAPTER THE TENTH

But there is in my mind one garden In which I should like to see the tallest and most truculent of Englishmen. It is the Tiergarten at Berlin. I recollect very vividly the first time that I passed through the Brandenburger Gate to visit some friends who occupied a flat in the block of buildings known as “In den Zelten.” I had just come within sight of the sentry at the gate-house when I saw him rush to the door of the guard-room and in a few seconds the whole guard had turned out with a trumpet and a drum. I was surprised, for I had not written to say that I was coming, and I was quite unused to such courtesy either in Berlin br any other city where there is a German population.

Before the incident went further I became aware of the fact that all the vehicles leaving “Unter den Linden” had become motionless, and that the officers who were in some of them were standing up at the salute. The only carriage in motion was a landau drawn by a pair of gray horses, with a handsome man in a plain uniform and the ordinary helmet of an infantry soldier sitting alone with his face to the horses. I knew him in a moment, though I had never seen him before—the Crown Prince Frederick, the husband of our Princess Royal—the “Fritz” of the intimate devotional telegrams to “Augusta” from the battlefields of France in 1870.

That Crown Prince was the very opposite to his truculent son and that contemptible blackguard, his son's son. Genial, considerate, and unassuming, disliking all display and theatrical posing, he was much more of an English gentleman than a German Prince. His son Wilhelm had even then begun to hate him—so I heard from a high personage of the Court.

I am certain that it was his reading of the campaign of 1870-1 that set this precious Wilhelm—this Emperor of the penny gaff—on his last enterprise. If one hunts up the old newspapers of 1870 one will read in every telegram from the German front of the King of Prussia and the Crown Prince marching to Victory, in the campaign started by a forgery and a lie, by that fine type of German trickery, unscrupulousness, brutality, and astuteness, Bismarck. Wilhelm could not endure the thought of the glory of his house being centred in those who had gone before him, and he chafed at the years that were passing without history repeating itself. He could with difficulty restrain himself from his attempt to dominate the world until his first-begotten was old enough to dominate the demi-monde of Paris—“Wilhelm to-day successfully stormed Le Chemin des Dames,” was the telegram that he sent to the Empress, in imitation of those sent by his grandfather to his Augusta. Le Chemin des Dames!—beyond a doubt his dream was to give France to his eldest, England to his second, and Russia to the third of the litter. After that, as he said to Mr. Gerard, he would turn his attention to America.

That was the dream of this Bonaparte done in German silver, and now his house is left unto him desolate—unto him whose criminality, sustained by the criminal conceit of his subjects, left thousands of houses desolate for evermore.

But we are now in the Garden of Peace, whose sweet savour should not be allowed to become rank by the mention of the name of the instigator of the German butcheries.

There is little under my eyes in this garden to remind me of one on the Rhine where I spent a summer a good many years ago. Its situation was ideal. The island of legends, Nonnenworth, was all that could be seen from one of the garden-houses; and one of the windows in the front was arranged in small squares of glass stained, but retaining their transparency, in various colours—crimson, pink, dark blue, ultramarine, and two degrees yellow. Through these theatrical mediums we were exhorted to view the romantic island, so that we had the rare chance of seeing Nonnenworth bathed in blood, or in flames of fire. It was undoubtedly a great privilege, but I only availed myself of it once; though our host, who must have looked through those glasses thousands of times, was always to be found gazing through the flaming yellow at the unhappy isle.

From the vineyard nearer the house we had the finest view of the ruins of the Drachenfels, and, on the other side of the Rhine, of Rolandseck. Godesburg was farther away, but we used to drive through the lovely avenue of cherry-trees and take the ferry to the hotel gardens where we lunched.

Another of the features of the great garden of our villa was a fountain whose chief charm was found in an arrangement by which, on treading on a certain slab of stone at the invitation of our host, the uninitiated were met by a deluging squirt of water.

This was the lighter side of hospitality; but it was at one time to be found in many English gardens, one of the earliest being at our Henry's Palace of Nonsuch.

In another well-built hut there was the apparatus of a game which is popular aboard ship in the Tropics: I believe it is called Bull; it is certainly an adaptation of the real bull. There is a framework of apertures with a number painted on each, the object of the player being to throw a metal disc resembling a quoit into the central opening. Another hut had a pole in the middle and cords with a ring at the end of each suspended from above, and the trick was to induce the ring to catch on to a particular hook in a set arranged round the pole. These were the games of exercise; but the intellectual visitors had for their diversion an immense globe of silvered glass which stood on a short pillar and enabled one to get in absurd perspective a reflection of the various parts of the garden where it was placed. This toy is very popular in some parts of France, and I have heard that about sixty years ago it was to be found in many English gardens also. It is a great favourite in the German lustgarten.

These are a few of the features of a private garden which may commend themselves to some of my friends; but the least innocuous will never be found within my castle walls. I would not think them worth mentioning but for the fact that yesterday a visitor kept rubbing us all over with sandpaper, so to speak, by talking enthusiastically about her visits to Germany, and in the midst of the autumn calm in our garden, telling us how beautifully her friend Von Rosche had arranged his grounds. She had the impudence to point to one of the most impregnable of my “features,” saying with a smile,—

“The Count would not approve of that, I'm afraid.”

“I am so glad,” said Dorothy sweetly. “If I thought that there was anything here of which he would approve, I should put on my gardening boots and trample it as much out of existence as our relations are with those contemptible counts and all their race.”

And then, having found the range, I brought my heavy guns into action and “the case began to spread.”

I trust that I made myself thoroughly offensive, and when I recall some of the things I said, my conscience acquits me of any shortcomings in this direction.

“You were very wise,” said Dorothy; “but I think you went too far when you said. 'Good-bye, Miss Haldane.' I saw her wince at that.”

“I knew that I would never have a chance of speaking to her again,” I replied.

“Oh, yes; but—Haldane—Haldane! If you had made it Snowden or MacDonald it would not have been so bad; but Haldane!”

“I said Haldane because I meant Haldane, and because Haldane is a synonym for colossal impudence—the impudence cf a police-court attorney defending a prostitute with whom he was on terms of disgusting intimacy. What a trick it was to leave the War Office, out of which he knew he would be turned, and then cajole his friend Asquith into giving him a peerage and the Seals, so that he might have his pension of five thousand pounds a year for the rest of his natural life! If that is to be condoned, all that I can say is that we must revise all our notions of political pettifogging. I forget at the moment how many retired Lord Chancellors there are who are pocketing their pension, but have done nothing to earn it.”

“What, do you call voting through thick and thin with your party nothing?”

“I don't. That is how, what we call a sovereign to-day is worth only nine shillings, and a man who got thirty shillings a week as a gardener only gets three pounds now: thirty shillings in 1913 was mere than three pounds to-day. And in England——”

“Hush, hush. Remember, 'My country right or wrong.'”

“I do remember. That is why I rave. When my country, right or wrong is painted out and 'my party, right or wrong' substituted, isn't it time one raved?”

“You didn't talk in that strain when you wrote a leading article every day for a newspaper.”

“I admit it; but—but—well, things hadn't come to a head in those old days.”

“You mean that they had not come into your head, mon vieux, if you will allow me to say so.”

I did allow her to say so—she had said so before asking my leave, which on the whole I admit is a very good way of saying things.

To be really frank, I confess that I was very glad that the dialogue ended here. I fancied the possibility of her having stored away in that wonderful group of pigeon holes which she calls her memory, a memorandum endorsed with the name of Campbell-Bannerman or a dossier labelled “Lansdowne.” For myself I recollect very well that a vote of the representatives of the People had declared that Campbell-Bannerman had left the country open to destruction by his failure to provide an adequate supply of cordite. In the days of poor Admiral Byng such negligence would have been quickly followed by an execution; but with the politician it was followed by a visit to Buckingham Palace and a decoration as a hero. When it was plain that Lord Lansdowne had made, and was still making, a muddle of the South African War, he was promoted to a more important post in the Government—namely, the Foreign Office. With such precedents culled from the past, why should any one be surprised to find the instigator of the Gallipoli gamble, whose responsibility was proved by a Special Commission of Inquiry, awarded the most important post next to that of the Prime Minister?

Yes, on the whole I was satisfied to accept my Dorothy's smiling rebuke with a smile; and the sequel of the incident showed me that I was wise in this respect; for I found her the next day looking with admiring eyes at our Temple.

Our Temple was my masterpiece, and it was the “feature” which our visitor had, without meaning it, commended so extravagantly when she had assured us that her friend Count Von Bosche would not have approved of it.

“I think, my child, now that I come to think of it, that your single-sentence retort respecting the value of the Count's possible non-approval was more effective than my tirade about the vulgarity of German taste in German gardens, especially that one at Honnef-on-Rhine, where I was jocularly deluged with Rhine water. You know how to hit off such things. You are a born sniper.”

“Sniping is a woman's idea of war,” said Dorothy.

“I don't like to associate women and warfare,” said I shaking my head.

“That is because of your gentle nature, dear,” said she with all the smoothness of a smoothing-iron fresh from a seven-times heated furnace. “But isn't it strange that in most languages the word War is a noun feminine?”

“They were always hard on woman in those days,” said I vaguely. “But they're making up for it now.”

“What are you talking about?” she cried. “Why, they're harder than ever on women in this country. Haven't they just insisted on enchaining them with the franchise, with the prospect of seats in the House of Commons? Oh, Woman—poor Woman!—poor, poor Woman—what have you done to deserve this?”