Those memorable days that move in procession, their heads just out
of the mist of years long dead--the most of them are full-eyed as the
dandelion that from dawn to shade has steeped itself in sunlight.
Here and there in their ranks, however, moves a forlorn one who is
blind--blind in the sense of the dulled window-pane on which the pelting
raindrops have mingled and run down, obscuring sunshine and the circling
birds, happy fields, and storied garden; blind with the spatter of a
misery uncomprehended, unanalysed, only felt as something corporeal in
its buffeting effects.
Martha began it; and yet Martha was not really to blame. Indeed, that
was half the trouble of it--no solid person stood full in view, to be
blamed and to make atonement. There was only a wretched, impalpable
condition to deal with. Breakfast was just over; the sun was summoning
us, imperious as a herald with clamour of trumpet; I ran upstairs to
her with a broken bootlace in my hand, and there she was, crying in a
corner, her head in her apron. Nothing could be got from her but the
same dismal succession of sobs that would not have done, that struck
and hurt like a physical beating; and meanwhile the sun was getting
impatient, and I wanted my bootlace.
Inquiry below stairs revealed the cause. Martha's brother was dead,
it seemed--her sailor brother Billy; drowned in one of those strange
far-off seas it was our dream to navigate one day. We had known Billy
well, and appreciated him. When an approaching visit of Billy to his
sister had been announced, we had counted the days to it. When his
cheery voice was at last heard in the kitchen and we had descended
with shouts, first of all he had to exhibit his tattooed arms, always a
subject for fresh delight and envy and awe; then he was called upon
for tricks, jugglings, and strange, fearful gymnastics; and lastly came
yarns, and more yarns, and yarns till bedtime. There had never been any
one like Billy in his own particular sphere; and now he was drowned,
they said, and Martha was miserable, and--and I couldn't get a new
bootlace. They told me that Billy would never come back any more, and I
stared out of the window at the sun which came back, right enough, every
day, and their news conveyed nothing whatever to me. Martha's sorrow hit
home a little, but only because the actual sight and sound of it gave
me a dull, bad sort of pain low down inside--a pain not to be actually
located. Moreover, I was still wanting my bootlace.
This was a poor sort of a beginning to a day that, so far as outside
conditions went, had promised so well. I rigged up a sort of jurymast
of a bootlace with a bit of old string, and wandered off to look up the
girls, conscious of a jar and a discordance in the scheme of things. The
moment I entered the schoolroom something in the air seemed to tell
me that here, too, matters were strained and awry. Selina was staring
listlessly out of the window, one foot curled round her leg. When I
spoke to her she jerked a shoulder testily, but did not condescend to
the civility of a reply. Charlotte, absolutely unoccupied, sprawled in
a chair, and there were signs of sniffles about her, even at that early
hour. It was but a trifling matter that had caused all this electricity
in the atmosphere, and the girls' manner of taking it seemed to me most
unreasonable. Within the last few days the time had come round for the
despatch of a hamper to Edward at school. Only one hamper a term was
permitted him, so its preparation was a sort of blend of revelry
and religious ceremony. After the main corpus of the thing had been
carefully selected and safely bestowed--the pots of jam, the cake, the
sausages, and the apples that filled up corners so nicely--after the
last package had been wedged in, the girls had deposited their own
private and personal offerings on the top. I forget their precise
nature; anyhow, they were nothing of any particular practical use to a
boy. But they had involved some contrivance and labour, some skimping
of pocket money, and much delightful cloud-building as to the effect
on their enraptured recipient. Well, yesterday there had come a terse
acknowledgment from Edward, heartily commending the cakes and the jam,
stamping the sausages with the seal of Smith major's approval, and
finally hinting that, fortified as he now was, nothing more was
necessary but a remittance of five shillings in postage stamps to enable
him to face the world armed against every buffet of fate. That was all.
Never a word or a hint of the personal tributes or of his appreciation
of them. To us--to Harold and me, that is--the letter seemed natural
and sensible enough. After all, provender was the main thing, and five
shillings stood for a complete equipment against the most unexpected
turns of luck. The presents were very well in their way--very nice, and
so on--but life was a serious matter, and the contest called for cakes
and half-crowns to carry it on, not gew-gaws and knitted mittens and the
like. The girls, however, in their obstinate way, persisted in taking
their own view of the slight. Hence it was that I received my second
rebuff of the morning.
Somewhat disheartened, I made my way downstairs and out into the
sunlight, where I found Harold playing conspirators by himself on the
gravel. He had dug a small hole in the walk and had laid an imaginary
train of powder thereto; and, as he sought refuge in the laurels from
the inevitable explosion, I heard him murmur: “'My God!' said the Czar,
'my plans are frustrated!'” It seemed an excellent occasion for being
a black puma. Harold liked black pumas, on the whole, as well as any
animal we were familiar with. So I launched myself on him, with the
appropriate howl, rolling him over on the gravel.
Life may be said to be composed of things that come off and things that
don't come off. This thing, unfortunately, was one of the things that
didn't come off. From beneath me I heard a shrill cry of, “Oh, it's my
sore knee!” And Harold wriggled himself free from the puma's clutches,
bellowing dismally. Now, I honestly didn't know he had a sore knee,
and, what's more, he knew I didn't know he had a sore knee. According to
boy-ethics, therefore, his attitude was wrong, sore knee or not, and no
apology was due from me. I made half-way advances, however, suggesting
we should lie in ambush by the edge of the pond and cut off the ducks as
they waddled down in simple, unsuspecting single file; then hunt them
as bisons flying scattered over the vast prairie. A fascinating pursuit
this, and strictly illicit. But Harold would none of my overtures, and
retreated to the house wailing with full lungs.
Things were getting simply infernal. I struck out blindly for the open
country; and even as I made for the gate a shrill voice from a window
bade me keep off the flower-beds. When the gate had swung to behind me
with a vicious click I felt better, and after ten minutes along the road
it began to grow on me that some radical change was needed, that I was
in a blind alley, and that this intolerable state of things must somehow
cease. All that I could do I had already done. As well-meaning a fellow
as ever stepped was pounding along the road that day, with an exceeding
sore heart; one who only wished to live and let live, in touch with his
fellows, and appreciating what joys life had to offer. What was wanted
now was a complete change of environment. Somewhere in the world, I
felt sure, justice and sympathy still resided. There were places called
pampas, for instance, that sounded well. League upon league of grass,
with just an occasional wild horse, and not a relation within the
horizon! To a bruised spirit this seemed a sane and a healing sort of
existence. There were other pleasant corners, again, where you dived
for pearls and stabbed sharks in the stomach with your big knife.
No relations would be likely to come interfering with you when thus
blissfully occupied. And yet I did not wish--just yet--to have done with
relations entirely. They should be made to feel their position first,
to see themselves as they really were, and to wish--when it was too
late--that they had behaved more properly.
Of all professions, the army seemed to lend itself the most thoroughly
to the scheme. You enlisted, you followed the drum, you marched, fought,
and ported arms, under strange skies, through unrecorded years. At last,
at long last, your opportunity would come, when the horrors of war were
flickering through the quiet country-side where you were cradled and
bred, but where the memory of you had long been dim. Folk would run
together, clamorous, palsied with fear; and among the terror-stricken
groups would figure certain aunts. “What hope is left us?” they would
ask themselves, “save in the clemency of the General, the mysterious,
invincible General, of whom men tell such romantic tales?” And the army
would march in, and the guns would rattle and leap along the village
street, and, last of all, you--you, the General, the fabled hero--you
would enter, on your coal-black charger, your pale set face seamed by
an interesting sabre-cut. And then--but every boy has rehearsed this
familiar piece a score of times. You are magnanimous, in fine--that goes
without saying; you have a coal-black horse, and a sabre-cut, and you
can afford to be very magnanimous. But all the same you give them a good
talking-to.
This pleasant conceit simply ravished my soul for some twenty minutes,
and then the old sense of injury began to well up afresh, and to call
for new plasters and soothing syrups. This time I took refuge in happy
thoughts of the sea. The sea was my real sphere, after all. On the sea,
in especial, you could combine distinction with lawlessness, whereas the
army seemed to be always weighted by a certain plodding submission to
discipline. To be sure, by all accounts, the life was at first a rough
one. But just then I wanted to suffer keenly; I wanted to be a poor
devil of a cabin boy, kicked, beaten, and sworn at--for a time. Perhaps
some hint, some inkling of my sufferings might reach their ears. In
due course the sloop or felucca would turn up--it always did--the
rakish-looking craft, black of hull, low in the water, and bristling
with guns; the jolly Roger flapping overhead, and myself for sole
commander. By and by, as usually happened, an East Indiaman would come
sailing along full of relations--not a necessary relation would be
missing. And the crew should walk the plank, and the captain should
dance from his own yardarm, and then I would take the passengers
in hand--that miserable group of well-known figures cowering on the
quarterdeck!--and then--and then the same old performance: the air thick
with magnanimity. In all the repertory of heroes, none is more truly
magnanimous than your pirate chief.
When at last I brought myself back from the future to the actual
present, I found that these delectable visions had helped me over a
longer stretch of road than I had imagined; and I looked around and took
my bearings. To the right of me was a long low building of grey stone,
new, and yet not smugly so; new, and yet possessing distinction,
marked with a character that did not depend on lichen or on crumbling
semi-effacement of moulding and mullion. Strangers might have been
puzzled to classify it; to me, an explorer from earliest years, the
place was familiar enough. Most folk called it “The Settlement”; others,
with quite sufficient conciseness for our neighbourhood, spoke of “them
there fellows up by Halliday's”; others again, with a hint of derision,
named them the “monks.” This last title I supposed to be intended for
satire, and knew to be fatuously wrong. I was thoroughly acquainted
with monks--in books--and well knew the cut of their long frocks, their
shaven polls, and their fascinating big dogs, with brandy-bottles round
their necks, incessantly hauling happy travellers out of the snow. The
only dog at the settlement was an Irish terrier, and the good fellows
who owned him, and were owned by him, in common, wore clothes of the
most nondescript order, and mostly cultivated side-whiskers. I had
wandered up there one day, searching (as usual) for something I never
found, and had been taken in by them and treated as friend and comrade.
They had made me free of their ideal little rooms, full of books and
pictures, and clean of the antimacassar taint; they had shown me their
chapel, high, hushed, and faintly scented, beautiful with a strange new
beauty born both of what it had and what it had not--that too familiar
dowdiness of common places of worship. They had also fed me in their
dining-hall, where a long table stood on trestles plain to view, and all
the woodwork was natural, unpainted, healthily scrubbed, and redolent of
the forest it came from. I brought away from that visit, and kept by me
for many days, a sense of cleanness, of the freshness that pricks the
senses--the freshness of cool spring water; and the large swept spaces
of the rooms, the red tiles, and the oaken settles, suggested a comfort
that had no connection with padded upholstery.
On this particular morning I was in much too unsociable a mind for
paying friendly calls. Still, something in the aspect of the place
harmonized with my humour, and I worked my way round to the back, where
the ground, after affording level enough for a kitchen-garden, broke
steeply away. Both the word Gothic and the thing itself were still
unknown to me, yet doubtless the architecture of the place, consistent
throughout, accounted for its sense of comradeship in my hour of
disheartenment. As I mused there, with the low, grey, Purposeful-looking
building before me, and thought of my pleasant friends within, and what
good times they always seemed to be having, and how they larked with the
Irish terrier, whose footing was one of a perfect equality, I thought
of a certain look in their faces, as if they had a common purpose and
a business, and were acting under orders thoroughly recognized and
understood. I remembered, too, something that Martha had told me,
about these same fellows doing “a power o' good,” and other hints I had
collected vaguely, of renouncements, rules, self-denials, and the
like. Thereupon, out of the depths of my morbid soul swam up a new and
fascinating idea; and at once the career of arms seemed over-acted and
stale, and piracy, as a profession, flat and unprofitable. This, then,
or something like it, should be my vocation and my revenge. A severer
line of business, perhaps, such as I had read of; something that
included black bread and a hair-shirt. There should be vows,
too--irrevocable, blood-curdling vows; and an iron grating. This iron
grating was the most necessary feature of all, for I intended that on
the other side of it my relations should range themselves--I mentally
ran over the catalogue, and saw that the whole gang was present, all in
their proper places--a sad-eyed row, combined in tristful appeal. “We
see our error now,” they would say; “we were always dull dogs, slow to
catch--especially in those akin to us--the finer qualities of soul!
We misunderstood you, misappreciated you, and we own up to it. And now--”
“Alas, my dear friends,” I would strike in here, waving towards them
an ascetic hand--one of the emaciated sort, that lets the light shine
through at the fingertips--“Alas, you come too late! This conduct is
fitting and meritorious on your part, and indeed I always expected it of
you, sooner or later; but the die is cast, and you may go home again and
bewail at your leisure this too tardy repentance of yours. For me, I am
vowed and dedicated, and my relations henceforth are austerity and holy
works. Once a month, should you wish it, it shall be your privilege to
come and gaze at me through this very solid grating; but--” Whack! A
well-aimed clod of garden soil, whizzing just past my ear, starred on a
tree-trunk behind, spattering me with dirt, The present came back to me
in a flash, and I nimbly took cover behind the trees, realizing that the
enemy was up and abroad, with ambuscades, alarms, and thrilling sallies.
It was the gardener's boy, I knew well enough; a red proletariat, who
hated me just because I was a gentleman. Hastily picking up a nice
sticky clod in one hand, with the other I delicately projected my hat
beyond the shelter of the tree-trunk. I had not fought with Red-skins
all these years for nothing. As I had expected, another clod, of the
first class for size and stickiness, took my poor hat full in the
centre. Then, Ajax-like, shouting terribly, I issued from shelter
and discharged my ammunition. Woe then for the gardener's boy, who,
unprepared, skipping in premature triumph, took the clod full in his
stomach! He, the foolish one, witless on whose side the gods were
fighting that day, discharged yet other missiles, wavering and wide of
the mark; for his wind had been taken with the first clod, and he shot
wildly, as one already desperate and in flight. I got another clod in at
short range; we clinched on the brow of the hill, and rolled down to the
bottom together. When he had shaken himself free and regained his legs,
he trotted smartly off in the direction of his mother's cottage; but
over his shoulder he discharged at me both imprecation and deprecation,
menace mixed up with an under-current of tears.
But as for me, I made off smartly for the road, my frame tingling, my
head high, with never a backward look at the Settlement of suggestive
aspect, or at my well-planned future which lay in fragments around it.
Life had its jollities, then; life was action, contest, victory! The
present was rosy once more, surprises lurked on every side, and I was
beginning to feel villainously hungry.
Just as I gained the road a cart came rattling by, and I rushed for
it, caught the chain that hung below, and swung thrillingly between the
dizzy wheels, choked and blinded with delicious-smelling dust, the world
slipping by me like a streaky ribbon below, till the driver licked at
me with his whip, and I had to descend to earth again. Abandoning the
beaten track, I then struck homewards through the fields; not that the
way was very much shorter, but rather because on that route one avoided
the bridge, and had to splash through the stream and get refreshingly
wet. Bridges were made for narrow folk, for people with aims and
vocations which compelled abandonment of many of life's highest
pleasures. Truly wise men called on each element alike to minister
to their joy, and while the touch of sun-bathed air, the fragrance
of garden soil, the ductible qualities of mud, and the spark-whirling
rapture of playing with fire, had each their special charm, they did
not overlook the bliss of getting their feet wet. As I came forth on the
common Harold broke out of an adjoining copse and ran to meet me, the
morning rain-clouds all blown away from his face. He had made a new
squirrel-stick, it seemed. Made it all himself; melted the lead and
everything! I examined the instrument critically, and pronounced it
absolutely magnificent. As we passed in at our gate the girls were
distantly visible, gardening with a zeal in cheerful contrast to their
heartsick lassitude of the morning.
“There's bin another letter come today,” Harold explained, “and the
hamper got joggled about on the journey, and the presents worked down
into the straw and all over the place. One of 'em turned up inside the
cold duck. And that's why they weren't found at first. And Edward said,
Thanks awfully!”
I did not see Martha again until we were all re-assembled at tea-time,
when she seemed red-eyed and strangely silent, neither scolding nor
finding fault with anything. Instead, she was very kind and thoughtful
with jams and things, feverishly pressing unwonted delicacies on us, who
wanted little pressing enough. Then suddenly, when I was busiest, she
disappeared; and Charlotte whispered me presently that she had heard her
go to her room and lock herself in. This struck me as a funny sort of
proceeding.