The Romance of a Pro-Consul. James Milne
'Giant Eagle Flying Aloft'; the storming of Wereroa Pa; and an escape from an ambush.
XVII. FOR ENGLAND'S SAKE
Keeping the painter from being cut; an election contest at Newark; a visit from Mr. Mundella; the pacifying of the tribes; and finally the golden legend of Hine-Moa the Maori maiden.
XVIII. A FATHER OF FEDERATION
A word on Mr. Gladstone, and many words on Anglo-Saxon federation, the ideas underlying it, elements making for it, and the benefits which would follow in its train.
XIX. WAITING TO GO
Backward and forward, being farther memories, one telling of a tryst with Dean Stanley; then, an exposition of simple faith and the romance of death, as leading to the Hereafter.
THE ROMANCE OF A PRO-CONSUL
I PERSONAL AND PARTICULAR
'Perhaps there is something in old age that likes to have a young mind clinging to it.' Sir George Grey was speaking of the famous people he had known in his youth long, long before. He struck an inner note of nature which is surely equally valid the other way? Whenever I think of the remark, I am inclined to discover one reason why I came to know Sir George so well.
I met him, as I have met other characters of English story in our own day. You go into these great waters, seeking that all who care may know. You cry across them, answer comes back or it does not, and there endeth the lesson, until the next time.
It was different with Sir George Grey. He hauled me straight in-board, saying, 'Now, call upon me often, and we'll talk mankind over. Going by myself, no two people can meet without being a means of instruction to each other, to say nothing else. You are where the swing of events must be felt, and I am in the back-water of retirement. It may entertain us both, to study new subjects under old lights.'
Thus flew many an hour, and many an evening, and the memory of them is green and grateful to me. Here was an incident, there a reflection, and always it was Sir George Grey intimate, whether in a frame large or small. It is the rivulets, babbling to the big stream, that really tell its tale, for without them it would not be; and so with the river of life. Beside me, a scarred veteran looked back upon himself, hailing some venture from the mist of years. Again, it might be an event on the wing; or the future, and him bending eagerly forward into its sunshine.
We wrote things, he inspiring, I setting down, and by and by I exclaimed: 'Why, I am getting, to be quite a depository of your memories and ideas.' At that he smiled, 'And who, do you fancy, would thank you for them?' Thus a portrait of Sir George grew with me, and I was for stroking it down somehow. 'Oh well,' quoth he, 'let's try and gather together what may be fresh, or suggestive, in my experiences, and yours be the blame. Whatever you do must have a certain spirit of action—you know what I mean!—or nobody will look at it. You'll need to whisk along.'
In Froude's phrase, the life of Sir George Grey had been a romance, and that was the road which caught me. No wonder, for it was a broad road, in the sense that his whole being was a romance. He saw things beneath a radiant light, and he saw many which to others would have been invisible. Nor, was his grasp of them less accurate, because he strained his eye most earnestly for what was most beautiful. The romantic element in his outlook gave colour, vividness, meaning to the unconsidered trifles—in fine, you had a chronicle and a seer.
On the one hand, then, I sought for the texts with a likely stir in them; on the other for those of personality, streaked by affairs. The references were consulted, or Sir George's own words of old delved among; and from his discourse there sprang a regular series of notes. 'It's a kind of task,' he remarked once, 'that might easily enough lend itself to vain-glory. We must avoid that.'
If there is anything that could so be read, I alone am the sinner; for with his memories there go my interpretation and appreciation of him. What should I do but write of Sir George Grey as I beheld him, of his career as one captured by it? His nature, like every rich nature, had folds, but I only knew their warmth. With that, I step round the mountain side.
II HOME IS THE WARRIOR
Things call to each other after the great silence has fallen, scenes come together, and that is how it seems here.
A ship, bound on a far voyage, lay in Plymouth waters the day that the Queen succeeded to the throne. It was laden with an expedition for the new wonderland of the Australias, whither it duly sailed. As leader, the expedition had a young lieutenant of the 83rd Foot Regiment, George Grey.
On a spring afternoon, fifty-seven years later, there landed at the same port, from a New Zealand liner, an aged man who received marked attention. He was as a gnarled oak of the wide-ranged British forest, and the younger trees bent in salute to him. It was Sir George Grey, returned finally to the Motherland, which had sent him forth to build nations.
He had gone in a tubby wooden craft, the winds his carrier, across oceans that were pathless, except to the venturer. He returned by steam, through seas which it had tamed to the churn and rumble of the screw. What thought in the contrasting pictures of the world! The two Englands might have met each other in the street, and passed, strangers.
'From the windows of my hotel at Plymouth,' Sir George recalled, 'I watched the citizens proclaim the young Queen. Who among them could have imagined the glorious reign hers was to be? It was to surpass in bounty of achievement all foretelling.'
Now, he would meet, for the last time, the Sovereign who, like himself, had tended the rise of Oceana. This was at Windsor, to which he had summons soon after he reached England. He had been exalted a member of the Privy Council, and must be sworn in by the Queen. The tribute was cheerful to him, since the very nature of it set seal upon his services to the Empire. The longing for some word of England's remembrance had assuredly been in his heart, which had often been left desolate. It was all rapture to England, like a child's to its mother.
'For mere honours themselves,' was his broad attitude thereon, 'I entertain no special regard. A title to one's name, a red ribbon, or something else, what are they but baubles, unless there is more? What more? Why, they hand down a record of the public work that a person may have endeavoured to perform. In that respect they should have esteem, being the recognition of efforts to serve Queen and people.
'Nothing could be more unfortunate than that a country should neglect services rendered to it. The loss is its own, because, apart from justice to the individual, his example is not kept alive to encourage others coming after. In so far, then, as that reasoning may apply to myself—not very far, perhaps—I do sincerely value any honours I have received. Not otherwise; and it is easy to understand that a distinction, granted without adequate cause, might exercise a really pernicious effect upon the tone of a nation.'
While Sir George awaited the Queen's commands at Windsor, she sent him them. He was not to go on his knees, a usual part of the ceremony of swearing in a Privy Councillor. She had remembered, with a woman's feeling, that here was a patriarch, nimble no longer.
The meeting between Queen and servant was stately, in that they were the two people who linked most intimately Great and Greater Britain. To them Oceana was a living, sentient thing, not merely a glorious name and expanse. It had squalled in their ears. They could go back to the beginnings, could witness the whole panorama of the Colonies unroll itself. They stood for the history of a high endeavour, which had been nobly crowned. Oft, there had been weary clouds across the sky,