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Page 63
This is the year 1977. It will be objected that the episode I am going
to tell, having happened in 1917, having been witnessed by twenty-odd
thousand people, must have been, if true, for sixty years common
property and an old tale. But when General Cochrane--who saved England
at the end of the great war--told me the Kitchener incident of the story
last year, sitting in the rose-garden of the White Hart Inn at
Sonning-on-Thames, I had never heard of it.
I wonder why he told me. Probably, as is the case in most things which
most people do, from a mixture of impulses. For one thing I am an
American girl, with a fresher zest to hear tales of those titanic days
than the people or the children of the people who lived through them.
Also the great war of 1914 has stirred me since I was old enough to know
about it, and I have read everything concerning it which I could lay
hands on, and talked to everyone who had knowledge of it. Also, General
Cochrane and I made friends from the first minute. I was a quite
unimportant person of twenty-four years, he a magnificent hero of
eighty, one of the proud figures of England; it made me a bit dizzy when
I saw that he liked me. One feels, once in a long time, an unmistakable
double pull, and knows that oneself and another are friends, and not
age, color, race nor previous condition of servitude makes the slightest
difference. To have that happen with a celebrity, a celebrity whom it
would have been honor enough simply to meet, is quite dizzying. This was
the way of it.
I was staying with my cousin Mildred Ward, an Atlanta girl who married
Sir Cecil Ward, an English baronet of Oxfordshire. I reached
Martin-Goring on a day in July just in time to dress for dinner. When I
came down, a bit early, Milly looked me over and pronounced favorably.
"You're not so hard to look at," she pronounced. "It takes an American
really to wear French clothes. I'm glad you're looking well tonight,
because one of your heroes--Oh!"
She had floated inconsequently against a bookcase in a voyage along the
big room, and a spray of wild roses from a vase on the shelf caught in
her pretty gold hair.
"Oh--why does Middleton stick those catchy things up there?" she
complained, separating the flowers from her hair, and I followed her
eyes above the shelf.
"Why, that's a portrait of Kitchener--the old great Kitchener, isn't
it?" I asked. "Did he belong to Cecil's people?"
"No," answered Milly, "only Cecil's grandfather and General Cochrane--or
something--" her voice trailed. And then, "I've got somebody you'll be
crazy about tonight, General Cochrane."
"General Cochrane?"
"Oh! You pretend to know about the great war and don't know General
Cochrane, who saved England when the fleet was wrecked. Don't know him!"
"Oh!" I said again. "Know him? Know him! I know every breath, he drew.
Only I couldn't believe my ears. The boy Donald Cochrane? It isn't true
is it? How did you ever, ever--?"
"He lives five miles from us," said Milly, unconcernedly. "We see a lot
of him. His wife was Cecil's great-aunt. She's dead now. His daughter is
my best friend. 'The boy Donald Cochrane'!" She smiled a little. "He's
no boy now. He's old. Even heroes do that--get old."
And with that the footman at the door announced "General Cochrane."
I stared away up at a very tall, soldierly old man with a jagged scar
across his forehead. His wide-open, black-lashed gray eyes flashed a
glance like a menace, like a sword, and then suddenly smiled as if the
sun had jumped from a bank of storm-clouds. And I looked into those
wonderful eyes and we were friends. As fast as that. Most people would
think it nonsense, but it happened so. A few people will understand. He
took me out to dinner, and it was as if no one else was at the table. I
was aware only of the one heroic personality. At first I dared not speak
of his history, and then, without planning or intention, my own voice
astonished my own ears. I announced to him:
"You have been my hero since I was ten years old."
It was a marvelous thing he did, the lad of twenty, even considering
that the secret was there at his hand, ready for him to use. The
histories say that--that no matter if he did not invent the device, it
was his ready wit which remembered it, and his persistence which forced
the war department to use it. Yes, and his heroism which led the ship
and all but gave his life. And when he had fulfilled his mission he
stepped back into the place of a subaltern; he was modest, even
embarrassed, at the great people who thronged to him. England was saved;
that was all his affair; nothing, so the books say, could prod him into
prominence--though he rose to be a General later--after that, after
being the first man in England for those days. It was this personage
with whom I had gone out to dinner, and to whom I dared make that sudden
speech: "You have been my hero, General Cochrane, since I was ten years
old."
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