room, more bare and brown than any I had seen since I left school. While
I stood there waiting and staring out into the prison court-yard, there
came, rolling and rumbling in, a Black Maria. It drew up with a clatter,
and I saw through the barred door the single prisoner—a young girl of
perhaps eighteen—dressed in rusty black. She was resting her forehead
against a bar and looking out, her quick, narrow dark eyes taking in her
new surroundings with a sort of sharp, restless indifference; and her
pale, thin-upped, oval face quite expressionless. Behind those bars she
seemed to me for all the world like a little animal of the cat tribe
being brought in to her Zoo. Me she did not see, but if she had I felt
she would not shrink —only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she
was giving all else. The policeman on the step behind had disappeared
at once, and the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round,
began to gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him,
and he smiled back; a large man; not unkindly. Then he returned to his
horses, and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the bars,
just staring out. Watching her like that, unseen, I seemed to be able
to see right through that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask. I seemed to know
that little creature through and through, as one knows anything that one
surprises off its guard, sunk in its most private moods. I seemed to see
her little restless, furtive, utterly unmoral soul, so stripped of all
defence, as if she had taken it from her heart and handed it out to me.
I saw that she was one of those whose hands slip as indifferently into
others' pockets as into their own; incapable of fidelity, and incapable
of trusting; quick as cats, and as devoid of application; ready to
scratch, ready to purr, ready to scratch again; quick to change, and
secretly as unchangeable as a little pebble. And I thought: “Here we
are, taking her to the Zoo (by no means for the first time, if demeanour
be any guide), and we shall put her in a cage, and make her sew, and
give her good books which she will not read; and she will sew, and
walk up and down, until we let her out; then she will return to her old
haunts, and at once go prowling and do exactly the same again, what ever
it was, until we catch her and lock her up once more. And in this way we
shall goon purifying Society until she dies.” And I thought: If indeed
she had been created cat in body as well as in soul, we should not have
treated her thus, but should have said: 'Go on, little cat, you scratch
us sometimes, you steal often, you are as sensual as the night. All this
we cannot help. It is your nature. So were you made—we know you cannot
change—you amuse us! Go on, little cat!' Would it not then be better,
and less savoury of humbug if we said the same to her whose cat-soul has
chanced into this human shape? For assuredly she will but pilfer, and
scratch a little, and be mildly vicious, in her little life, and do no
desperate harm, having but poor capacity for evil behind that petty,
thin-upped mask. What is the good of all this padlock business for such
as she; are we not making mountains out of her mole hills? Where is our
sense of proportion, and our sense of humour? Why try to alter the make
and shape of Nature with our petty chisels? Or, if we must take care of
her, to save ourselves, in the name of Heaven let us do it in a better
way than this! And suddenly I remembered that I was a Grand Juryman, a
purifier of Society, who had brought her bill in true; and, that I might
not think these thoughts unworthy of a good citizen, I turned my eyes
away from her and took up my list of indictments. Yes, there she was, at
least so I decided: Number 42, “Pilson, Jenny: Larceny, pocket-picking.”
And I turned my memory back to the evidence about her case, but I could
not remember a single word. In the margin I had noted: “Incorrigible
from a child up; bad surroundings.” And a mad impulse came over me to go
back to my window and call through the bars to her: “Jenny Pilson! Jenny
Pilson! It was I who bred you and surrounded you with evil! It was I
who caught you for being what I made you! I brought your bill in true! I
judged you, and I caged you! Jenny Pilson! Jenny Pilson!” But just as I
reached the window, the door of my waiting-room was fortunately opened,
and a voice said: “Now, sir; at your service!”...
I sat again in that scoop of the shore by the long rolling seas, burying
in the sand the piece of paper which had summoned me away to my Grand
Jury; and the same thoughts came to me with the breaking of the waves
that had come to me before: How, in every wave was a particle that had
known the shore of every land; and in each sparkle of the hot sunlight
stealing up that bright water into the sky, the microcosm of all change
and of all unity!
1912.
GONE
Not possible to conceive of rarer beauty than that which clung about the
summer day three years ago when first we had the news of the poor Herds.
Loveliness was a net of golden filaments in which the world was caught.
It was gravity itself, so tranquil; and it was a sort of intoxicating
laughter. From the top field that we crossed to go down to their
cottage, all the far sweep of those outstretched wings of beauty could
be seen. Very wonderful was the poise of the sacred bird, that moved
nowhere but in our hearts. The lime-tree scent was just stealing out
into air for some days already bereft of the scent of hay; and the sun
was falling to his evening home behind our pines and beeches. It was no
more than radiant warm. And, as we went, we wondered why we had not
been told before that Mrs. Herd was so very ill. It was foolish to
wonder—these people do not speak of suffering till it is late. To speak,
when it means what this meant loss of wife and mother—was to flatter
reality too much. To be healthy, or—die! That is their creed. To go
on till they drop —then very soon pass away! What room for states
between—on their poor wage, in their poor cottages?
We crossed the mill-stream in the hollow—to their white, thatched
dwelling; silent, already awed, almost resentful of this so-varying
Scheme of Things. At the gateway Herd himself was standing, just in from
his work. For work in the country does not wait on illness —even death
claims from its onlookers but a few hours, birth none at all, and it is
as well; for what must be must, and in work alone man rests from grief.
Sorrow and anxiety had made strange alteration already in Herd's face.
Through every crevice of the rough, stolid mask the spirit was peeping,
a sort of quivering suppliant, that seemed to ask all the time: “Is it
true?” A regular cottager's figure, this of Herd's—a labourer of
these parts—strong, slow, but active, with just a touch of the untamed
somewhere, about the swing and carriage of him, about the strong jaw,
and wide thick-lipped mouth; just that something independent, which, in
great variety, clings to the natives of these still remote, half-pagan
valleys by the moor.
We all moved silently to the lee of the outer wall, so that our voices
might not carry up to the sick woman lying there under the eaves, almost
within hand reach. “Yes, sir.” “No, sir.” “Yes, ma'am.” This, and the
constant, unforgettable supplication of his eyes, was all that came from
him; yet he seemed loath to let us go, as though he thought we had some
mysterious power to help him—the magic, perhaps, of money, to those who
have none. Grateful at our promise of another doctor, a specialist,
he yet seemed with his eyes to say that he knew that such were only
embroideries of Fate. And when we had wrung his hand and gone, we heard
him coming after us: His wife had said she would like to see us, please.
Would we come up?
An old woman and Mrs. Herd's sister were in the sitting-room; they
showed us to the crazy, narrow stairway. Though we lived distant but
four hundred yards of a crow's flight, we had never seen Mrs. Herd
before, for that is the way of things in this land of minding one's own
business—a slight, dark, girlish-looking woman, almost quite refined
away, and with those eyes of the dying, where the spirit is coming
through, as it only does when it knows that all is over except just
the passing. She lay in a double bed, with clean white sheets. A
white-washed room, so low that the ceiling almost touched our heads,
some flowers in a bowl, the small lattice window open. Though it was hot
in there, it was better far than the rooms of most families in towns,
living on a wage of twice as much; for here was no sign of defeat in
decency or cleanliness. In her face, as in poor Herd's, was that
same strange mingling of resigned despair and almost eager appeal,
so terrible to disappoint. Yet, trying not to disappoint it, one felt
guilty of treachery: What was the good, the kindness, in making this
poor bird flutter still with hope against the bars, when fast prison had
so surely closed in round her? But what else could we do? We could not
give her those glib assurances that naive souls make so easily to others
concerning their after state.
Secretly, I think, we knew that her philosophy of calm reality, that
queer and unbidden growing tranquillity which precedes death, was
nearer to our own belief, than would be any gilt-edged orthodoxy; but
nevertheless (such is the strength of what is expected), we felt it
dreadful that we could not console her with the ordinary presumptions.
“You mustn't give up hope,” we kept on saying: “The new doctor will do a
lot for you; he's a specialist—a very clever man.”
And she kept on answering: “Yes, sir.” “Yes, ma'am.” But still her eyes
went on asking, as if there were something else she wanted. And then to
one of us came an inspiration:
“You mustn't let your husband worry about expense. That will be all
right.”
She smiled then, as if the chief cloud on her soul had been the thought
of the arrears her illness and death would leave weighing on him with
whom she had shared this bed ten years and more. And with that smile
warming the memory of those spirit-haunted eyes, we crept down-stairs
again, and out into the fields.
It was more beautiful than ever, just touched already with evening
mystery—it was better than ever to be alive. And the immortal wonder
that has haunted man since first he became man, and haunts, I think,
even the animals—the unanswerable question,—why joy and beauty must ever
be walking hand in hand with ugliness and pain haunted us across
those fields of life and loveliness. It was all right, no doubt, even
reasonable, since without dark there is no light. It was part of that
unending sum whose answer is not given; the merest little swing of the
great pendulum! And yet——! To accept this violent contrast without a
sigh of revolt, without a question! No sirs, it was not so jolly as all
that! That she should be dying there at thirty, of a creeping malady
which she might have checked, perhaps, if she had not had too many
things to do for the children and husband, to do anything for herself—if
she had not been forced to hold the creed: Be healthy, or die! This
was no doubt perfectly explicable and in accordance with the Supreme
Equation; yet we, enjoying life, and health, and ease of money, felt
horror and revolt on, this evening of such beauty. Nor at the moment did
we derive great comfort from the thought that life slips in and out of
sheath, like sun-sparks on water, and that of all the cloud of summer
midges dancing in the last gleam, not one would be alive to-morrow.
It was three evenings later that we heard uncertain footfalls on the
flagstones of the verandah, then a sort of brushing sound against the
wood of the long, open window. Drawing aside the curtain, one of us
looked out. Herd was standing there in the bright moonlight, bareheaded,
with roughened hair. He came in, and seeming not to know quite where he
went, took stand by the hearth, and putting up his dark hand, gripped
the mantelshelf. Then, as if recollecting himself, he said: “Gude
evenin', sir; beg pardon, M'm.” No more for a full minute; but his hand,
taking some little china thing, turned it over and over without ceasing,
and down his broken face tears ran. Then, very suddenly, he said: “She's
gone.” And his hand turned over and over that little china thing, and
the tears went on rolling down. Then, stumbling, and swaying like a man
in drink, he made his way out again into the moonlight. We watched him
across the lawn and path, and through the gate, till his footfalls died
out there in the field, and his figure was lost in the black shadow of
the holly hedge.
And the night was so beautiful, so utterly, glamourously beautiful, with
its star-flowers, and its silence, and its trees clothed in moonlight.
All was tranquil as a dream of sleep. But it was long before our hearts,
wandering with poor Herd, would let us remember that she had slipped
away into so beautiful a dream.
The dead do not suffer from their rest in beauty. But the living—-!
1911.
THRESHING
When the drone of the thresher breaks through the autumn sighing of
trees and wind, or through that stillness of the first frost, I get
restless and more restless, till, throwing down my pen, I have gone out
to see. For there is nothing like the sight of threshing for making one
feel good—not in the sense of comfort, but at heart. There, under the
pines and the already leafless elms and beech-trees, close to the great
stacks, is the big, busy creature, with its small black puffing
engine astern; and there, all around it, is that conglomeration of
unsentimental labour which invests all the crises of farm work with such
fascination. The crew of the farm is only five all told, but to-day
they are fifteen, and none strangers, save the owners of the travelling
thresher.
They are working without respite and with little speech, not at all as
if they had been brought together for the benefit of some one else's
corn, but as though they, one and all, had a private grudge against Time
and a personal pleasure in finishing this job, which, while it lasts, is
bringing them extra pay and most excellent free feeding. Just as after
a dilatory voyage a crew will brace themselves for the run in, recording
with sudden energy their consciousness of triumph over the elements, so
on a farm the harvests of hay and corn, sheep-shearing, and threshing
will bring out in all a common sentiment, a kind of sporting energy,
a defiant spurt, as it were, to score off Nature; for it is only a
philosopher here and there among them, I think, who sees that Nature
is eager to be scored off in this fashion, being anxious that some one
should eat her kindly fruits.
With ceremonial as grave as that which is at work within the thresher
itself, the tasks have been divided. At the root of all things,
pitchforking from the stack, stands—the farmer, moustached, and always
upright was he not in the Yeomanry?—dignified in a hard black hat, no
waistcoat, and his working coat so ragged that it would never cling to
him but for pure affection. Between him and the body of the machine are
five more pitch forks, directing the pale flood of raw material. There,
amongst them, is poor Herd, still so sad from his summer loss, plodding
doggedly away. To watch him even now makes one feel how terrible is that
dumb grief which has never learned to moan. And there is George Yeoford,
almost too sober; and Murdon plying his pitchfork with a supernatural
regularity that cannot quite dim his queer brigand's face of dark, soft
gloom shot with sudden humours, his soft, dark corduroys and battered
hat. Occasionally he stops, and taking off that hat, wipes his
corrugated brow under black hair, and seems to brood over his own
regularity.
Down here, too, where I stand, each separate function of the thresher
has its appointed slave. Here Cedric rakes the chaff pouring from the
side down into the chaff-shed. Carting the straw that streams from the
thresher bows, are Michelmore and Neck—the little man who cannot read,
but can milk and whistle the hearts out of his cows till they follow
him like dogs. At the thresher's stern is Morris, the driver, selected
because of that utter reliability which radiates from his broad,
handsome face. His part is to attend the sacking of the three kinds of
grain for ever sieving out. He murmurs: “Busy work, sir!” and opens a
little door to show me how “the machinery does it all,” holding a sack
between his knees and some string in his white teeth. Then away goes the
sack—four bushels, one hundred and sixty pounds of “genuines, seconds,
or seed”—wheeled by Cedric on a little trolley thing, to where
George-the-Gaul or Jim-the-Early-Saxon is waiting to bear it on his back
up the stone steps into the corn-chamber.
It has been raining in the night; the ground is a churn of straw and
mud, and the trees still drip; but now there is sunlight, a sweet air,
and clear sky, wine-coloured through the red, naked, beechtwigs tipped
with white untimely buds. Nothing can be more lovely than this late
autumn day, so still, save for the droning of the thresher and the
constant tinny chuckle of the grey, thin-headed Guinea-fowl, driven by
this business away from their usual haunts.
And soon the feeling that I knew would come begins creeping over me, the
sense of an extraordinary sanity in this never-ceasing harmonious labour
pursued in the autumn air faintly perfumed with wood-smoke, with the
scent of chaff, and whiffs from that black puffing-Billy; the sense
that there is nothing between this clean toil—not too hard but hard
enough—and the clean consumption of its clean results; the sense that
nobody except myself is in the least conscious of how sane it all is.
The brains of these sane ones are all too busy with the real affairs of
life, the disposition of their wages, anticipation of dinner, some girl,
some junketing, some wager, the last rifle match, and, more than all,
with that pleasant rhythmic nothingness, companion of the busy swing and
play of muscles, which of all states is secretly most akin to the deep
unconsciousness of life itself. Thus to work in the free air for
the good of all and the hurt of none, without worry or the breath of
acrimony—surely no phase of human life so nears the life of the truly
civilised community—the life of a hive of bees. Not one of these working
so sanely—unless it be Morris, who will spend his Sunday afternoon
on some high rock just watching sunlight and shadow drifting on the
moors—not one, I think, is distraught by perception of his own sanity,
by knowledge of how near he is to Harmony, not even by appreciation
of the still radiance of this day, or its innumerable fine shades of
colour. It is all work, and no moody consciousness—all work, and will
end in sleep.
I leave them soon, and make my way up the stone steps to the “corn
chamber,” where tranquillity is crowned. In the whitewashed room
the corn lies in drifts and ridges, three to four feet deep, all
silvery-dun, like some remote sand desert, lifeless beneath the moon.
Here it lies, and into it, staggering under the sacks, George-the-Gaul
and Jim-the-Early Saxon tramp up to their knees, spill the sacks over
their heads, and out again; and above where their feet have plunged
the patient surface closes again, smooth. And as I stand there in
the doorway, looking at that silvery corn drift, I think of the
whole process, from seed sown to the last sieving into this tranquil
resting-place. I think of the slow, dogged ploughman, with the crows
above him on the wind; of the swing of the sower's arm, dark up against
grey sky on the steep field. I think of the seed snug-burrowing for
safety, and its mysterious ferment under the warm Spring rain, of
the soft green shoots tapering up so shyly toward the first sun, and
hardening in air to thin wiry stalk. I think of the unnumerable tiny
beasts that have jangled in that pale forest; of the winged blue jewels
of butterfly risen from it to hover on the wild-rustling blades; of
that continual music played there by the wind; of the chicory and poppy
flowers that have been its lights-o' love, as it grew tawny and full of
life, before the appointed date when it should return to its captivity.
I think of that slow-travelling hum and swish which laid it low, of the
gathering to stack, and the long waiting under the rustle and drip of
the sheltering trees, until yesterday the hoot of the thresher blew, and
there began the falling into this dun silvery peace. Here it will lie
with the pale sun narrowly filtering in on it, and by night the pale
moon, till slowly, week by week, it is stolen away, and its ridges and
drifts sink and sink, and the beasts have eaten it all....
When the dusk is falling, I go out to them again. They have nearly
finished now; the chaff in the chaff-shed is mounting hillock-high;
only the little barley stack remains unthreshed. Mrs. George-the-Gaul
is standing with a jug to give drink to the tired ones. Some stars are
already netted in the branches of the pines; the Guinea-fowl are silent.
But still the harmonious thresher hums and showers from three sides the
straw, the chaff, the corn; and the men fork, and rake, and cart, and
carry, sleep growing in their muscles, silence on their tongues, and the
tranquillity of the long day nearly ended in their souls. They will go
on till it is quite dark.
1911.
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE
“Yes, suh—here we are at that old-time place!” And our dark driver drew
up his little victoria gently.
Through the open doorway, into a dim, cavernous, ruined house of New
Orleans we passed. The mildew and dirt, the dark denuded dankness of
that old hostel, rotting down with damp and time!
And our guide, the tall, thin, grey-haired dame, who came forward with
such native ease and moved before us, touching this fungused wall, that
rusting stairway, and telling, as it were, no one in her soft, slow
speech, things that any one could see—what a strange and fitting figure!
Before the smell of the deserted, oozing rooms, before that old creature
leading us on and on, negligent of all our questions, and talking to the
air, as though we were not, we felt such discomfort that we soon made
to go out again into such freshness as there was on that day of dismal
heat. Then realising, it seemed, that she was losing us, our old guide
turned; for the first time looking in our faces, she smiled, and said in
her sweet, weak voice, like the sound from the strings of a spinet long
unplayed on: “Don' you wahnd to see the dome-room: an' all the other
rooms right here, of this old-time place?”
Again those words! We had not the hearts to disappoint her. And as we
followed on and on, along the mouldering corridors and rooms where the
black peeling papers hung like stalactites, the dominance of our senses
gradually dropped from us, and with our souls we saw its soul —the soul
of this old-time place; this mustering house of the old South, bereft of
all but ghosts and the grey pigeons niched in the rotting gallery round
a narrow courtyard open to the sky.
“This is the dome-room, suh and lady; right over the slave-market it is.
Here they did the business of the State—sure; old-time heroes up therein
the roof—Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Davis, Lee —there they are!
All gone—now! Yes, suh!”
A fine—yea, even a splendid room, of great height, and carved grandeur,
with hand-wrought bronze sconces and a band of metal bordering, all
blackened with oblivion. And the faces of those old heroes encircling
that domed ceiling were blackened too, and scarred with damp, beyond
recognition. Here, beneath their gaze, men had banqueted and danced and
ruled. The pride and might and vivid strength of things still fluttered
their uneasy flags of spirit, moved disherited wings! Those old-time
feasts and grave discussions —we seemed to see them printed on the
thick air, imprisoned in this great chamber built above their dark
foundations. The pride and the might and the vivid strength of
things—gone, all gone!
We became conscious again of that soft, weak voice.
“Not hearing very well, suh, I have it all printed, lady—beautifully
told here—yes, indeed!”
She was putting cards into our hands; then, impassive, maintaining ever
her impersonal chant, the guardian of past glory led us on.
“Now we shall see the slave-market—downstairs, underneath! It's wet for
the lady the water comes in now yes, suh!”
On the crumbling black and white marble floorings the water indeed
was trickling into pools. And down in the halls there came to us
wandering—strangest thing that ever strayed through deserted grandeur—a
brown, broken horse, lean, with a sore flank and a head of tremendous
age. It stopped and gazed at us, as though we might be going to give it
things to eat, then passed on, stumbling over the ruined marbles. For a
moment we had thought him ghost—one of the many. But he was not, since
his hoofs sounded. The scrambling clatter of them had died out into
silence before we came to that dark, crypt-like chamber whose marble
columns were ringed in iron, veritable pillars of foundation. And then
we saw that our old guide's hands were full of newspapers. She struck a
match; they caught fire and blazed. Holding high that torch, she said:
“See! Up there's his name, above where he stood. The auctioneer. Oh yes,
indeed! Here's where they sold them!”
Below that name, decaying on the wall, we had the slow, uncanny feeling
of some one standing there in the gleam and flicker from that paper
torch. For a moment the whole shadowy room seemed full of forms and
faces. Then the torch lied out, and our old guide, pointing through an
archway with the blackened stump of it, said:
“'Twas here they kept them indeed, yes!”