expression slowly but surely coming over every face; the future was not;
only the present—this happy present of marching behind the discordance
of a brass band; this strange present of crowded movement and laughter
in open air.
We others—some dozen accidentals like myself, and the tall, grey-haired
lady interested in “the people,” together with those few kind spirits in
charge of “the show”—marched too, a little self-conscious, desiring with
a vague military sensation to hold our heads up, but not too much,
under the eyes of the curious bystanders. These—nearly all men—were
well-wishers, it was said, though their faces, pale from their own work
in shop or furnace, expressed nothing but apathy. They wished well, very
dumbly, in the presence of this new thing, as if they found it queer
that women should be doing something for themselves; queer and rather
dangerous. A few, indeed, shuffled along between the column and
the little hopeless shops and grimy factory sheds, and one or two
accompanied their women, carrying the baby. Now and then there passed us
some better-to-do citizen-a housewife, or lawyer's clerk, or ironmonger,
with lips pressed rather tightly together and an air of taking no notice
of this disturbance of traffic, as though the whole thing were a rather
poor joke which they had already heard too often.
So, with laughter and a continual crack of voices our jay-like crew
swung on, swaying and thumping in the strange ecstasy of irreflection,
happy to be moving they knew not where, nor greatly why, under the
visiting sun, to the sound of murdered music. Whenever the band stopped
playing, discipline became as tatterdemalion as the very flags and
garments; but never once did they lose that look of essential order,
as if indeed they knew that, being the worst-served creatures in the
Christian world, they were the chief guardians of the inherent dignity
of man.
Hatless, in the very front row, marched a tall slip of a girl,
arrow-straight, and so thin, with dirty fair hair, in a blouse and skirt
gaping behind, ever turning her pretty face on its pretty slim neck from
side to side, so that one could see her blue eyes sweeping here,
there, everywhere, with a sort of flower-like wildness, as if a secret
embracing of each moment forbade her to let them rest on anything and
break this pleasure of just marching. It seemed that in the never-still
eyes of that anaemic, happy girl the spirit of our march had elected
to enshrine itself and to make thence its little excursions to each
ecstatic follower. Just behind her marched a little old woman—a maker
of chains, they said, for forty years —whose black slits of eyes were
sparkling, who fluttered a bit of ribbon, and reeled with her sense of
the exquisite humour of the world. Every now and then she would make a
rush at one of her leaders to demonstrate how immoderately glorious was
life. And each time she spoke the woman next to her, laden with a heavy
baby, went off into squeals of laughter. Behind her, again, marched one
who beat time with her head and waved a little bit of stick, intoxicated
by this noble music.
For an hour the pageant wound through the dejected street, pursuing
neither method nor set route, till it came to a deserted slag-heap,
selected for the speech-making. Slowly the motley regiment swung into
that grim amphitheatre under the pale sunshine; and, as I watched, a
strange fancy visited my brain. I seemed to see over every ragged head
of those marching women a little yellow flame, a thin, flickering gleam,
spiring upward and blown back by the wind. A trick of the sunlight,
maybe? Or was it that the life in their hearts, the inextinguishable
breath of happiness, had for a moment escaped prison, and was fluttering
at the pleasure of the breeze?
Silent now, just enjoying the sound of the words thrown down to them,
they stood, unimaginably patient, with that happiness of they knew not
what gilding the air above them between the patchwork ribands of their
poor flags. If they could not tell very much why they had come, nor
believe very much that they would gain anything by coming; if their
demonstration did not mean to the world quite all that oratory would
have them think; if they themselves were but the poorest, humblest,
least learned women in the land—for all that, it seemed to me that in
those tattered, wistful figures, so still, so trustful, I was looking
on such beauty as I had never beheld. All the elaborated glory of things
made, the perfected dreams of aesthetes, the embroideries of romance,
seemed as nothing beside this sudden vision of the wild goodness native
in humble hearts.
1910.
A CHRISTIAN
One day that summer, I came away from a luncheon in company of an old
College chum. Always exciting to meet those one hasn't seen for years;
and as we walked across the Park together I kept looking at him askance.
He had altered a good deal. Lean he always was, but now very lean, and
so upright that his parson's coat was overhung by the back of his long
and narrow head, with its dark grizzled hair, which thought had not yet
loosened on his forehead. His clean-shorn face, so thin and oblong, was
remarkable only for the eyes: dark-browed and lashed, and coloured
like bright steel, they had a fixity in them, a sort of absence, on
one couldn't tell what business. They made me think of torture. And his
mouth always gently smiling, as if its pinched curly sweetness had been
commanded, was the mouth of a man crucified—yes, crucified!
Tramping silently over the parched grass, I felt that if we talked, we
must infallibly disagree; his straight-up, narrow forehead so suggested
a nature divided within itself into compartments of iron.
It was hot that day, and we rested presently beside the Serpentine. On
its bright waters were the usual young men, sculling themselves to and
fro with their usual sad energy, the usual promenaders loitering and
watching them, the usual dog that swam when it did not bark, and barked
when it did not swim; and my friend sat smiling, twisting between his
thin fingers the little gold cross on his silk vest.
Then all of a sudden we did begin to talk; and not of those matters of
which the well-bred naturally converse—the habits of the rarer kinds of
ducks, and the careers of our College friends, but of something never
mentioned in polite society.
At lunch our hostess had told me the sad story of an unhappy marriage,
and I had itched spiritually to find out what my friend, who seemed so
far away from me, felt about such things. And now I determined to find
out.
“Tell me,” I asked him, “which do you consider most important—the letter
or the spirit of Christ's teachings?”
“My dear fellow,” he answered gently, “what a question! How can you
separate them?”
“Well, is it not the essence of His doctrine that the spirit is all
important, and the forms of little value? Does not that run through all
the Sermon on the Mount?”
“Certainly.”
“If, then,” I said, “Christ's teaching is concerned with the spirit, do
you consider that Christians are justified in holding others bound by
formal rules of conduct, without reference to what is passing in their
spirits?”
“If it is for their good.”
“What enables you to decide what is for their good?”
“Surely, we are told.”
“Not to judge, that ye be not judged.”
“Oh! but we do not, ourselves, judge; we are but impersonal ministers of
the rules of God.”
“Ah! Do general rules of conduct take account of the variations of the
individual spirit?”
He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent heresy.
“You had better explain yourself more fully,” he said. “I really don't
follow.”
“Well, let us take a concrete instance. We know Christ's saying of the
married that they are one flesh! But we know also that there are
wives who continue to live the married life with dreadful feelings of
spiritual revolt wives who have found out that, in spite of all their
efforts, they have no spiritual affinity with their husbands. Is that in
accordance with the spirit of Christ's teaching, or is it not?”
“We are told——” he began.
“I have admitted the definite commandment: 'They twain shall be one
flesh.' There could not be, seemingly, any more rigid law laid down; how
do you reconcile it with the essence of Christ's teaching? Frankly,
I want to know: Is there or is there not a spiritual coherence in
Christianity, or is it only a gathering of laws and precepts, with no
inherent connected spiritual philosophy?”
“Of course,” he said, in his long-suffering voice, “we don't look at
things like that—for us there is no questioning.”
“But how do you reconcile such marriages as I speak of, with the spirit
of Christ's teaching? I think you ought to answer me.”
“Oh! I can, perfectly,” he answered; “the reconciliation is through
suffering. What a poor woman in such a case must suffer makes for the
salvation of her spirit. That is the spiritual fulfilment, and in such a
case the justification of the law.”
“So then,” I said, “sacrifice or suffering is the coherent thread of
Christian philosophy?”
“Suffering cheerfully borne,” he answered.
“You do not think,” I said, “that there is a touch of extravagance in
that? Would you say, for example, that an unhappy marriage is a more
Christian thing than a happy one, where there is no suffering, but only
love?”
A line came between his brows. “Well!” he said at last, “I would say,
I think, that a woman who crucifies her flesh with a cheerful spirit in
obedience to God's law, stands higher in the eyes of God than one who
undergoes no such sacrifice in her married life.” And I had the feeling
that his stare was passing through me, on its way to an unseen goal.
“You would desire, then, I suppose, suffering as the greatest blessing
for yourself?”
“Humbly,” he said, “I would try to.”
“And naturally, for others?”
“God forbid!”
“But surely that is inconsistent.”
He murmured: “You see, I have suffered.”
We were silent. At last I said: “Yes, that makes much which was dark
quite clear to me.”
“Oh?” he asked.
I answered slowly: “Not many men, you know, even in your profession,
have really suffered. That is why they do not feel the difficulty which
you feel in desiring suffering for others.”
He threw up his head exactly as if I had hit him on the jaw: “It's
weakness in me, I know,” he said.
“I should have rather called it weakness in them. But suppose you are
right, and that it's weakness not to be able to desire promiscuous
suffering for others, would you go further and say that it is Christian
for those, who have not experienced a certain kind of suffering, to
force that particular kind on others?”
He sat silent for a full minute, trying evidently to reach to the bottom
of my thought.
“Surely not,” he said at last, “except as ministers of God's laws.”
“You do not then think that it is Christian for the husband of such a
woman to keep her in that state of suffering—not being, of course, a
minister of God?”
He began stammering at that: “I—I——” he said. “No; that is, I think
not-not Christian. No, certainly.”
“Then, such a marriage, if persisted in, makes of the wife indeed a
Christian, but of the husband—the reverse.”
“The answer to that is clear,” he said quietly: “The husband must
abstain.”
“Yes, that is, perhaps, coherently Christian, on your theory: They would
then both suffer. But the marriage, of course, has become no marriage.
They are no longer one flesh.”
He looked at me, almost impatiently as if to say: Do not compel me to
enforce silence on you!
“But, suppose,” I went on, “and this, you know; is the more frequent
case, the man refuses to abstain. Would you then say it was more
Christian to allow him to become daily less Christian through his
unchristian conduct, than to relieve the woman of her suffering at the
expense of the spiritual benefit she thence derives? Why, in fact, do
you favour one case more than the other?”
“All question of relief,” he replied, “is a matter for Caesar; it cannot
concern me.”
There had come into his face a rigidity—as if I might hit it with my
questions till my tongue was tired, and it be no more moved than the
bench on which we were sitting.
“One more question,” I said, “and I have done. Since the Christian
teaching is concerned with the spirit and not forms, and the thread
in it which binds all together and makes it coherent, is that of
suffering——”
“Redemption by suffering,” he put in.
“If you will—in one word, self-crucifixion—I must ask you, and don't
take it personally, because of what you told me of yourself: In life
generally, one does not accept from people any teaching that is not the
result of firsthand experience on their parts. Do you believe that this
Christian teaching of yours is valid from the mouths of those who
have not themselves suffered—who have not themselves, as it were, been
crucified?”
He did not answer for a minute; then he said, with painful slowness:
“Christ laid hands on his apostles and sent them forth; and they in
turn, and so on, to our day.”
“Do you say, then, that this guarantees that they have themselves
suffered, so that in spirit they are identified with their teaching?”
He answered bravely: “No—I do not—I cannot say that in fact it is always
so.”
“Is not then their teaching born of forms, and not of the spirit?”
He rose; and with a sort of deep sorrow at my stubbornness said: “We are
not permitted to know the way of this; it is so ordained; we must have
faith.”
As he stood there, turned from me, with his hat off, and his neck
painfully flushed under the sharp outcurve of his dark head, a feeling
of pity surged up in me, as if I had taken an unfair advantage.
“Reason—coherence—philosophy,” he said suddenly. “You don't understand.
All that is nothing to me—nothing—nothing!”
1911
WIND IN THE ROCKS
Though dew-dark when we set forth, there was stealing into the frozen
air an invisible white host of the wan-winged light—born beyond the
mountains, and already, like a drift of doves, harbouring grey-white
high up on the snowy skycaves of Monte Cristallo; and within us,
tramping over the valley meadows, was the incredible elation of those
who set out before the sun has risen; every minute of the precious day
before us—we had not lost one!
At the mouth of that enchanted chine, across which for a million years
the howdahed rock elephant has marched, but never yet passed from sight,
we crossed the stream, and among the trees began our ascent. Very far
away the first cowbells chimed; and, over the dark heights, we saw the
thin, sinking moon, looking like the white horns of some devotional
beast watching and waiting up there for the god of light. That god came
slowly, stalking across far over our heads from top to top; then, of a
sudden, his flame-white form was seen standing in a gap of the valley
walls; the trees flung themselves along the ground before him, and
censers of pine gum began swinging in the dark aisles, releasing their
perfumed steam. Throughout these happy ravines where no man lives, he
shows himself naked and unashamed, the colour of pale honey; on his
golden hair such shining as one has not elsewhere seen; his eyes like
old wine on fire. And already he had swept his hand across the invisible
strings, for there had arisen, the music of uncurling leaves and
flitting things.
A legend runs, that, driven from land to land by Christians, Apollo hid
himself in Lower Austria, but those who ever they saw him there in
the thirteenth century were wrong; it was to these enchanted chines,
frequented only by the mountain shepherds, that he certainly came.
And as we were lying on the grass, of the first alp, with the star
gentians—those fallen drops of the sky—and the burnt-brown dandelions,
and scattered shrubs of alpen-rose round us, we were visited by one of
these very shepherds, passing with his flock—the fiercest-looking man
who ever, spoke in a gentle voice; six feet high, with an orange cloak,
bare knees; burnt as the very dandelions, a beard blacker than black,
and eyes more glorious than if sun and night had dived and were lying
imprisoned in their depths. He spoke in an unknown tongue, and could
certainly not understand any word of ours; but he smelled of the good
earth, and only through interminable watches under sun and stars could
so great a gentleman have been perfected.
Presently, while we rested outside that Alpine hut which faces the three
sphinx-like mountains, there came back, from climbing the smallest and
most dangerous of those peaks, one, pale from heat, and trembling with
fatigue; a tall man, with long brown hands, and a long, thin, bearded
face. And, as he sipped cautiously of red wine and water, he looked at
his little conquered mountain. His kindly, screwed-up eyes, his kindly,
bearded lips, even his limbs seemed smiling; and not for the world would
we have jarred with words that rapt, smiling man, enjoying the sacred
hour of him who has just proved himself. In silence we watched, in
silence left him smiling, knowing somehow that we should remember him
all our days. For there was in his smile the glamour of adventure just
for the sake of danger; all that high instinct which takes a man out of
his chair to brave what he need not.
Between that hut and the three mountains lies a saddle—astride of all
beauty and all colour, master of a titanic chaos of deep clefts, tawny
heights, red domes, far snow, and the purple of long shadows; and,
standing there, we comprehended a little of what Earth had been through
in her time, to have made this playground for most glorious demons.
Mother Earth! What travail undergone, what long heroic throes, had
brought on her face such majesty!
Hereabout edelweiss was clinging to smoothed-out rubble; but a little
higher, even the everlasting plant was lost, there was no more life. And
presently we lay down on the mountain side, rather far apart. Up here
above trees and pasture the wind had a strange, bare voice, free from
all outer influence, sweeping along with a cold, whiffing sound. On the
warm stones, in full sunlight, uplifted over all the beauty of Italy,
one felt at first only delight in space and wild loveliness, in the
unknown valleys, and the strength of the sun. It was so good to be
alive; so ineffably good to be living in this most wonderful world,
drinking air nectar.
Behind us, from the three mountains, came the frequent thud and scuffle
of falling rocks, loosened by rains. The wind, mist, and winter snow had
ground the powdery stones on which we lay to a pleasant bed, but once on
a time they, too, had clung up there. And very slowly, one could not
say how or when, the sense of joy began changing to a sense of fear.
The awful impersonality of those great rock-creatures, the terrible
impartiality of that cold, clinging wind which swept by, never an inch
lifted above ground! Not one tiny soul, the size of a midge or rock
flower, lived here. Not one little “I” breathed here, and loved!
And we, too, some day would no longer love, having become part of this
monstrous, lovely earth, of that cold, whiffling air. To be no longer
able to love! It seemed incredible, too grim to bear; yet it was true!
To become powder, and the wind; no more to feel the sunlight; to be
loved no more! To become a whiffling noise, cold, without one's self!
To drift on the breath of that noise, homeless! Up here, there were not
even those little velvet, grey-white flower-comrades we had plucked.
No life! Nothing but the creeping wind, and those great rocky heights,
whence came the sound of falling-symbols of that cold, untimely state
into which we, too, must pass. Never more to love, nor to be loved! One
could but turn to the earth, and press one's face to it, away from the
wild loveliness. Of what use loveliness that must be lost; of what use
loveliness when one could not love? The earth was warm and firm beneath
the palms of the hands; but there still came the sound of the impartial
wind, and the careless roar of the stories falling.
Below, in those valleys amongst the living trees and grass, was the
comradeship of unnumbered life, so that to pass out into Peace, to step
beyond, to die, seemed but a brotherly act, amongst all those others;
but up here, where no creature breathed, we saw the heart of the desert
that stretches before each little human soul. Up here, it froze the
spirit; even Peace seemed mocking—hard as a stone. Yet, to try and hide,
to tuck one's head under one's own wing, was not possible in this air so
crystal clear, so far above incense and the narcotics of set creeds,
and the fevered breath of prayers and protestations. Even to know that
between organic and inorganic matter there is no gulf fixed, was of
no peculiar comfort. The jealous wind came creeping over the lifeless
limestone, removing even the poor solace of its warmth; one turned
from it, desperate, to look up at the sky, the blue, burning, wide,
ineffable, far sky.
Then slowly, without reason, that icy fear passed into a feeling, not of
joy, not of peace, but as if Life and Death were exalted into what was
neither life nor death, a strange and motionless vibration, in which one
had been merged, and rested, utterly content, equipoised, divested of
desire, endowed with life and death.
But since this moment had come before its time, we got up, and, close
together, marched on rather silently, in the hot sun.
1910.
MY DISTANT RELATIVE
Though I had not seen my distant relative for years—not, in fact, since
he was obliged to give Vancouver Island up as a bad job—I knew him at
once, when, with head a little on one side, and tea-cup held high,
as if, to confer a blessing, he said: “Hallo!” across the Club
smoking-room.
Thin as a lath—not one ounce heavier—tall, and very upright, with his
pale forehead, and pale eyes, and pale beard, he had the air of a ghost
of a man. He had always had that air. And his voice—that matter-of-fact
and slightly nasal voice, with its thin, pragmatical tone—was like a
wraith of optimism, issuing between pale lips. I noticed; too, that his
town habiliments still had their unspeakable pale neatness, as if, poor
things, they were trying to stare the daylight out of countenance.
He brought his tea across to my bay window, with that wistful
sociability of his, as of a man who cannot always find a listener.
“But what are you doing in town?” I said. “I thought you were in
Yorkshire with your aunt.”
Over his round, light eyes, fixed on something in the street, the lids
fell quickly twice, as the film falls over the eyes of a parrot.
“I'm after a job,” he answered. “Must be on the spot just now.”
And it seemed to me that I had heard those words from him before.
“Ah, yes,” I said, “and do you think you'll get it?”
But even as I spoke I felt sorry, remembering how many jobs he had been
after in his time, and how soon they ended when he had got them.
He answered:
“Oh, yes! They ought to give it me,” then added rather suddenly: “You
never know, though. People are so funny!”
And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell me, with quaint
impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in
connection with jobs he had not been given.
“You see,” he ended, “the country's in such a state—capital going out
of it every day. Enterprise being killed all over the place. There's
practically nothing to be had!”
“Ah!” I said, “you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?”
He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage.
“We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. National character's
losing all its backbone. No wonder, with all this molly-coddling going
on!”
“Oh!” I murmured, “molly-coddling? Isn't that excessive?”
“Well! Look at the way everything's being done for them! The working
classes are losing their self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their
independence is gone already!”
“You think?”
“Sure of it! I'll give you an instance——” and he went on to describe to
me the degeneracy of certain working men employed by his aunt and his
eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan.
“They don't do a stroke more than they're obliged,” he ended; “they
know jolly well they've got their Unions, and their pensions, and this
Insurance, to fall back on.”
It was evidently a subject on which he felt strongly.
“Yes,” he muttered, “the nation is being rotted down.”