E-text prepared by Julie Barkley, Christine D.,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
Author of
"Between Two Thieves," "The Headquarter Recruit,"
"The Cost of Wings"
Popular Edition
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.
First printed 6s. Edition, April, 1910.
New Impressions, May (three times), July, August, September, October,November, 1910; January, July, October, 1911; New Edition, May, 1912; NewImpressions, September, October, December, 1912; February, May, 1913.
Popular Edition, July, August, September, 1913; April, 1914; June, 1915;July, September, 1916; September, 1917; February, October, 1918; January,1920; January, 1922; July, 1924; January, 1927; February, 1930; May, 1932;March, 1934, March 1936
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
THE WINDMILL PRESS, KINGSWOOD, SURREY
What have the long years brought me since first, with this pen forpickaxe, I bowed my loins to quarry from the living rock of my world aboutme, bread and a home where Love should smile beside the hearthplace, andchiefly for Love's dear sake, that men should honour you who, above all onearth, I hold most in honour—a name among the writers of books thatlive!
What have the long years brought me! Well, not the things I hoped. Justbread and clothing, fire, and a little roof-tree; the purchased soil tomake a grave, and a space of leisure, before that grave be needed, towrite, myself, this book for me and for you. Hope has spread heriridescent Psyche-wings and left me; Ambition long ago shed hers to becomea working-ant. Love never came to sit in the chair beside the ingle. Anocean heaves between us, only for nightly dreams and waking thoughts tospan. Were those dear eyes to see me as I am to-day, I wonder whether theywould know me? For I grow grey, and furrows deepen in the forehead thedear hand will never smooth again. Remember me, then, only as I used tobe; my heart is the same always; in it the long, long years have wroughtno change.
But what have the long years brought me? Experience, that savoury salt,left where old tears have dried upon the shores of Time. Knowledge of myfellow men and women, of all sorts and conditions, and the love of them.Patience to bear what may yet have to be borne. Courage to encounter whatmay yet have to be encountered. Fortitude to meet the end, where faithholds up the Cross. Much have the long years brought me—besides yourfirst smile and your last kiss. For your next, I look past Death, Godaiding me, to the Eternal Life beyond....
South Wales,
April 22, 1909.
Upon a day near the end of August, one long, brilliant South Africanwinter, when the old Vierkleur waved over the Transvaal, and what is nowthe Orange River Colony was the Orange Free State, with the Dutch cantonstill showing on the staff-head corner of its tribarred flag, two large,heavily-laden waggons rolled over the grass-veld, only now thinking aboutchanging from yellow into green. Many years previously the wheels of theold voortrekkers had passed that way, bringing from Cape Colony, with thehousehold gods, goods and chattels, language and customs of the Dutch, theslips of the pomegranate and peach and orange trees, whose abundantblossoming dressed the orchards of the farms tucked away here a