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Free men freely work; Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease. Constance Grey and myself were the last of John Crondall's guests to leave him on that evening of the conference. As soon as we three were alone, Constance turned to Crondall, and said: "You must expect to have me among your camp followers if I find Aunt Mary can stand the travelling. I dare say there will be little things I can do."
But now that the Disciplinary Regiments have earned their honourable place as the most valuable portion of our non-professional defence forces, every one can see the wisdom of John Crondall's contention that not the name, but the public estimate of that name, had to be altered. Theoretically the value and necessity of discipline was, I suppose, always recognized.
They are with us heart and hand, my friends, and eager to prove it. And now I am going to tell you something about The Citizens." But before that last sentence had left Crondall's lips, we were in the thick of another storm of cheering.
On Sunday morning at three o'clock John Crondall went into his bedroom to sleep, and I slept in the room he had set aside for me in his flat too tired out to undress. Even Crondall's iron frame was weary that night, and he admitted to me before retiring from a table at which we had kept three typewriters busy till long after midnight, that he had reached his limit and must rest.
Some of these people were addressed by friends of John Crondall's and The Citizens, within the precincts of the hall. On Tuesday morning, sunrise found a great throng of people waiting to secure places when the hall should open. On both days members of the Royal Family were present, and on Tuesday the Primate of England presided over the service addressed by Stairs.
In the South African war he had served as an irregular, and achieved distinction in scouting and guiding work. John Crondall's life, I gathered, had been the very opposite of my own sheltered progress from Dorset village to school, from school to University, and thence to my present street-bound routine in London.
Joseph Farquharson, the well-known coal and iron magnate, who had been famous for his "Little England" sentiments a man who had boasted of his parochialism must have learned very much from the invasion and the teaching of the new movement. He gave one hundred thousand pounds to The Citizens after John Crondall's first address in Newcastle.
I read John Crondall's kindly letter with a good deal of interest, moved by the fact that his terse, friendly phrases recalled to me a phase of my own life which, though no more than a couple of years past, seemed to me wonderfully remote.
The religious character of the Canadian preachers' meetings had been sufficient to prevent these outbursts of popular feeling; but now the public seemed to welcome the secular freedom of The Citizens' gathering, as an opportunity for giving their feelings vent. I am not sure that it was John Crondall's message from the Colonies that they cheered.
There was the kiss, the long silence, John Crondall's stiffness, and then this look of distress, this hint of appeal, in the face of Constance. Well! And then my intimate knowledge of my chief would silence me, giving me assurance that I should never be a good enough man justly to reproach John Crondall. But it was all very puzzling, and more, to me, loving Constance as I loved her.
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