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Updated: June 17, 2025
"Yes, you have just missed my niece," said Mrs. Van Homrey, after a kindly reference to the strip of crepe on my arm. "She has gone in to Victoria Street to a 'conference of the powers' of John Crondall's convening. Oh, didn't you know he was here again? Yes, he arrived last week, and, as usual, is up to his neck in affairs already, and Constance with him.
Right or wrong, John Crondall carried you with him; for he dealt with men and things as he had brothered and known them, before ever he let loose, in a fiery peroration, that abstract idea of Empire patriotism which ruled his life. But it was not all this that made my paltry journalistic task a hard one. It was my certainty of Crondall's lofty sincerity.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power, with the Need, Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. Follow after follow after for the harvest is sown: By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own! Never before had I known days so full, so compact of effort and achievement, as were those of the week following the conference in John Crondall's rooms.
A few seconds after his servant had shown me into the dining-room of John Crondall's flat, the man himself entered to me with a rush, as his manner was, both hands outstretched to welcome me. "Good man!" he said. "I've had fine news of you from Constance Grey, and now you're here to confirm it. Splendid!" And then, with sudden gravity, and a glance at my coat sleeve: "I heard of your loss.
As he said that, I had a swift vision of myself and my record, as both must have appeared to a man like Crondall, whose whole life had been spent in patriotic effort. The vision was a good corrective for the unworthy shafts of jealousy for that no doubt they were which had come to me with John Crondall's references to Constance.
I had been new to London and to Fleet Street then, full of aspirations, of earnestness, of independent aims and hopes; fresh from the University and the more leisured days of my life as the son of the rector of Tarn Regis. I had had glimpses of much that was sordid and squalid in London life, at the period John Crondall's letter recalled, but as yet there had been no sordidness in my own life.
I thought of the greasy Teuton nondescript for whom I had kept Miss Grey waiting, and I felt colour rise in my face as I read John Crondall's letter: "I expect you have been burgeoning mightily since I left London, and I should not be surprised to learn that you have put the Daily Gazette and its kind definitely behind you. You remember our talks?
I verily believe that child has discovered the secret of perpetual motion." At first mention of John Crondall's name my heart had warmed to its recollection of the man, and a pleasurable thought of meeting him again. And immediately then the warm feeling had been penetrated by a vague sense of disquiet, when Mrs. Van Homrey spoke of his affairs "and Constance with him."
At the same time it should not be forgotten that we have John Crondall's own assurance that the Bill could never have been made law but for that opening and awakening of the hearts and minds of the British people which followed the spreading of the gospel of Duty by the Canadian preachers. Truly ye come of the Blood; slower to bless than to ban; Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.
I have no words to tell you how glad I am about this. I see John Crondall's hand here, don't you?" "Yes," I said; and thought: "Naturally! You see John Crondall everywhere." "He was dead against any sort of an Alliance while we were under a cloud. And he was right. The British people couldn't afford to enter any compact upon terms of less than perfect equality and independence.
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