Not seldom he was in his
father's arms sobbing over the sufferings of humanity and the hardness
of the world's heart, mingling his tears with his father's. Often in
these late days he is in sore need of Mrs. Bramwell Booth's
level-headed good sense to restore his exhausted emotions. And
occasionally, like Lord Northcliffe, it is wise for him to get away from
the Machine altogether, to travel far across the world or to rest in a
cottage by the sea, waiting for a return of the energy which consumes
him and yet keeps him alive.
It is possible to think that this formidable apostle of conversion is
himself a divided self. His house of clay, one might almost suggest, is
occupied by two tenants, one of whom would weep over sinners, while the
other can serve God only by cudgelling the Devil back to hell with
imprecations of a rich and florid nature. This stronger self, because of
its cudgel, is in command of the situation, but the whimpering of the
other is not to be stilled by blows which, however hearty and
devastating, have not yet brought the devil to his knees.
It is interesting to sit in conversation with this devoted disciple of
evangelicalism, and occasionally to lift one's eyes from his face to the
portrait of his mother which hangs above his head. The two faces are
almost identical, hauntingly identical; so much so that one comes to
regard the coachman-like whiskers clapped to the General's cheeks as in
the nature of a disguise, thinking of him as his mother's eldest
daughter rather than as his father's eldest son.
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