For two days the grand piano remained on its side at the bottom of the
stairs, while furniture choked and eddied round it, as when a drain
is stopped up and the water cannot flow away. It really seemed that
it would stop there for ever, and that the only chance of playing it
again involved being strapped into a chair, and laid sideways on the
floor. Eventually the foreman of the removal company kindly promised
to come back next morning, take out the drawing-room window, and sling
the creature in. This would require a regiment of men, and the sort of
tackle with which thirteen-inch guns are lifted into a ship. He hoped
(he could go no further than that) that the stone window ledge would
stand the strain; I hoped so too. My wits, I suppose, were sharpened
by this hideous prospect, and I telephoned to the firm who had made
the piano to send down three men and see if they concurred in the
impossibility of getting the piano upstairs except _via_ the doubtful
window-ledge. In half an hour they had taken it up the staircase
without touching the banisters or scratching the wall.
Magically, as by the waving of a wand, the constipation on the
ground-floor was relieved; it was as if the Fairy Prince (in guise
of three sainted piano-movers) had restored life to the house. The
tables and chairs danced into their places; bookshelves became peopled
with volumes; the china clattered nimbly into cupboards, and carpets
unrolled themselves on the stairs. There was dawn on the wreck, and
Kino and I set to work on the great scheme of black and white floor
decoration which was destined to embellish in a manner unique and
surprising the whole of the ground-floor.
Linoleum was the material of it, an apotheosis of linoleum. Round the
walls of the passages, the hall, the front room, were to run borders
of black and white, with panels in recesses, enclosing a chess-board
of black and white squares. Roll after roll of linoleum arrived, and
with gravers we cut them up, and tacked down the borders and the panels
and the chess-board with that admirable and headless species of nail
known as "little brads." The work was not noiseless like the building
of the Temple of Solomon, but when it was done, my visitors were indeed
Queens of Sheba, for no more spirit was left in them when on their
blinded eyes there dawned the glories of the floors that were regular
and clean as marble pavements, and kind to the tread. No professional
hand was permitted to assist in these orgies of decoration; two
inspired amateurs did it all, and one of them did about twenty times
as much as the other. (The reader may form his own conclusion as to
whether modesty or the low motive of seeking credit where the credit
belongs to another prompts my reticence on this point.) Then there
were wonderful things to be done with paint (and I really did a good
deal of that); ugly tiles were made beautiful with shining black, that
most decorative of all hues when properly used, and in one room the
splendour given to a door and a chimneypiece put Pompeii in its proper
place for ever. And all the time, as we worked, and put something of
human personality into the house, the spirit of home was peeping in at
windows shyly, tentatively, or hiding behind curtains, or going softly
about the pleasant passages, till at last one evening, as we finished
some arrangement of books in the front-room, I was conscious that it
had come to stay. It did not any longer shrink from observation or
withdraw itself when it thought I got a glimpse of it. It stood boldly
out, smiling and well pleased, and next day, when I woke for a moment
in the hour before dawn, with sparrow-twitters in the trees outside,
it was in my room, and I turned over contentedly and went to sleep
again. Was it that the disconsolate ghost in Oakley Street had come
here, transferring itself from the empty shell? Had it followed, like a
deserted cat, the familiar furniture, and the familiar denizens? Or had
a new spirit of home been born? Certainly the conviction that the house
had found itself, that it had settled down to an incarnate plane again
was no drowsy fantasy of the night; for in the morning, when I went
downstairs, the whole aspect of things had changed. I knew I was _chez
moi,_ instead of just carrying on existence in some borrowed lodging.
That morning an enormous letter, chiefly phonetic, arrived from
Seraphina. It was difficult to read, because when Seraphina wished to
erase a word, she had evidently smudged her finger over the wet ink,
and written something on top of it. At first I felt as bewildered as
King Belshazzar, when on the wall there grew the inconjecturable doom;
but since I had no Daniel in fee, I managed, by dint of trying again
and again, to make out the most of her message. She relapsed sometimes
into the dialect of Alatri, but chiefly she stuck to the good old plan,
recommended by Mr. Roosevelt, of putting down the letters like which
the word, when spoken, would sound. But by dint of saying it aloud, I
caught the gist of it all. No word had come from Alatri since Francis's
return, and even as I read the glamour of that remote existence grew
round me.
She had written before, she said, both to Signorino Francesco and to
me, but she supposed that the letters had gone wrong, for they said
the Government soaked off the stamps from the envelopes and sold them
again. But that was all right; they wanted every penny they could get
to spend against the devil-Austrians. _Dio!_ What tremendous battles!
How the gallant Italian boys were sweeping them out of the Trentino!
And Goriza had fallen twenty times already. Surely it must have fallen
by now. And there was the straight road to Trieste....
The flame of war had set Alatri alight; there was scarce a man of
military age left on the island, except the soldiers who from time to
time were quartered there. The price of provisions was hideous, but
thrifty folk had planted vegetables in their gardens, and if God said
that only the rich might have meat, why, the poor would get on very
well without. She herself had planted nutritious beans in the broad
flower-bed, as soon as the flowers were over, as she had said in her
previous letter (not received), and already she had made good soup from
them, since Signorino Francesco had told her to use garden produce for
herself. But Signora Machonochie had come to borrow some beans, and, as
the beans belonged to the Signori, Seraphina wished for permission to
give her them, since they would otherwise be dried, and make good soup
again when the Signori returned. For herself--_scusi_--she thought the
Signora Machonochie was a good soul (though greedy), for she was always
making mittens for the troops on the snow of the frontier against the
winter-time, and went about the roads perpetually knitting, so that
one day she, not looking where she was going, charged into Ludovico's
manure cart, and was much soiled. So, if it was our wish that she
should have some beans, she should have them, but there would be fewer
bottles in the store-room.
Then Seraphina became more of a friend, less of a careful housekeeper.
She continued:
"The house expects your excellencies' dear presence
whenever you can return. All the rooms are like Sunday
brooches: there is no speck of dust. Pasqualino has been
gone this long time, for as soon as we went to war
with the stinking beasts, up he goes to the military
office, and swears on the Holy Book that he is just
turned nineteen, and has come to report himself to the
authorities. Of course, they looked him out in their
register, and he was but eighteen, but he confessed
his perjury when it was no longer any use to deny it,
and they were not displeased with him, nor did he go
to prison, as happened to Luigi. But they wanted young
fellows for the Red Cross who look after the wounded,
and, after many prayers, Pasqualino was permitted, in
spite of his perjury, to go and serve. Gold buttons, no
less, on his jacket; so smart he looked; and there was
Caterina smiling and crying all in one, and she gulped
and kissed him, and kissed him again and gulped, and
for all the world she was as proud of him as the priest
on Sunday morning, and would not have had him stay. She
came up here to help in the house, and it is all for
love of Pasqualino, for once I offered her some _soldi_
for the help she had given me in dusting, and she just
smacked my hand, and the _soldi_ fell out, and we kissed
each other, for then I understood; and she asked to go
to Pasqualino's room and sat on the bed, and looked at
his washstand, and stroked the coat he had left behind.
Oh, I understand young hearts, Signor, for all that I
am old, and I left her alone there, and presently she
came down again and told me her trouble. It was the
night before he went, and your excellency must not think
hardly of him or her. _Scusi,_ if I give advice, but
they were young, and did not think, for you do not
think when you are young, and they are beautiful, both
of them, and when they are beautiful, who can wonder?
She knows he will marry her, and, indeed, Alatri knows
it too, and thus the _bambino_ will not be blackened.
Pasqualino is a good boy, and in spite of it, she wanted
him to go for the sake of the wounded, thinking nothing
of herself and the little one within her. Alatri will be
blind to the _bambino,_ and wait for him to make it all
right.
"Eh, what a pen I have, for it runs on like a tap! All
this last month I have been writing a little every day,
and now it is nearly finished. But still I think the
Signor would like to hear of Teresa of the Cake-shop.
There was never such a wonder; it was like a miracle.
Suddenly she would have no more of the cake-shop, but
must needs go to Naples, and learn to be a nurse, and
look after the wounded, as Pasqualino had done. Never,
as the Signor knows, had she gone down to the Marina
since fifteen years ago (or is it sixteen?), when she
went to meet her _promesso,_ Vincenzo Rhombo, who had
come back from Buenos Ayres, and even as he landed on
the Marina, was stricken in her very arms with the
cholera and died that day. Never since then had Teresa
gone to the Marina, whatever was the _festa_ or the
fireworks; but now nothing would serve her but that
she must go to help in the war. She had money, for the
cake-shop had done well all these years, and she must
needs go and spend her money in learning nursing in
Naples. All of a sudden it was so with her, and one
day a month ago she asked me to come down with her to
see her forth. And when we came to the Marina, Signor,
she shut her eyes, for she could not bear to see it,
and asked me to lead her along the quay to where the
boats took off the passengers by the steamer. All along
the quay I led her, she with eyes closed; but when we
came to the steps, where Vincenzo had landed and fell
into her arms a stricken man, then at last she opened
her eyes, or the tears opened them, and she fell on
her knees and kissed the place where Vincenzo had been
joined to her. She kissed it, and she kissed it, and
then suddenly her tears dried, and she stepped into
the boat and waved her hand to her friends and said:
'Vincenzo wishes it; Vincenzo wishes it.' Oh, a brave
woman! she had not baked her heart in the cake-shop.
"My humble duty to you, excellency, Seraphina has no
more to say, but that often the step goes up and down
in the studio. I think, as Donna Margherita said, that
someone guards the house. It is as a sentry, who makes
the house secure. But it will be a good day when I hear
there the steps of the Signorino and of you. All humble
compliments and the good wishes of a friend who is
Seraphina.
"_Scusi!_ Shall I sow the flower seeds in the garden
that were saved from last year? If the Signori will
not be here in the spring, what need to sow them, for
they will keep, will they not? But if there is a chance
of your coming, the garden must needs be gay with a
welcome."
Right in the middle of the black cloud of war there came a rift, as I
read Seraphina's budget of news. Some breeze parted the folds of it,
and I saw a peep of blue sky and bluer sea, and the stone-pine and
the terraced gardens, with the morning-glory rioting on the wall. But
how incredibly remote it seemed, as if it belonged to some previous
cycle of existence; as if the closed doors of eternity that swing
shut when we are born had opened again, and I looked on some previous
incarnation. I thought I remembered (before the war came) experiences
like those which Seraphina's letter suggested, but they seemed like
the affairs of childhood, when imagination is so mixed up with reality
that we scarcely know whether there are robbers in the shrubbery or
not. We pretend that there are, and even while we pretend dusk falls
and the shrubbery has to be passed, and we are not certain whether
there are not robbers there, after all. It was so with the recollection
of the things of which Seraphina spoke (and even they were mixed up
with war). I felt I might have dreamed them, or have invented them for
myself, or have experienced them in some pre-natal existence. Just
that one glimpse I had of them, and no more; then the rift in the
clouds closed up again, and blacker than ever before, except perhaps
during the days of the Retreat from Mons, grew the gigantic bastion
of storm through which we had to pass.... Even so once, thunderclouds
collected before me when I was on the top of an Alpine peak, gathering
and growing thicker with extraordinary swiftness. A rent came in them
for a moment, and through it we could see the pastures and villages ten
thousand feet below. Then it closed up, and we had to pass through the
clouds out of which already the lightning was leaping before we could
arrive on the safe familiar earth again.
I could scarcely realize, then, what life was like before the war,
and now, looking forward, it seemed impossible to imagine that there
could be any end to the murderous business. This month a wave of
pessimism swept over London; even those who had been most optimistic
were submerged in it; and all that was possible was to go on, the more
occupied the better, and, anyhow, not to talk about it. A dozen times
had our hopes flared high; a dozen times they had been extinguished.
Only a few months ago we had seen the advance of the Russian armies
through Galicia, and had told each other that the relentless
steam-roller had begun its irresistible progress across the Central
Empires, leaving them flattened out and ground to powder in its wake.
But now, instead of their being flattened out in its wake, it appeared
that they had only been concentrated and piled high in front of it,
for now the billow of the enemies' armies, poised and menacing, had
broken and swept the steam-roller far back on the beach, where now
it remained stuck in the shingle with quenched furnaces and a heavy
list. Przemysl had been retaken; the newly-christened Lvoff had become
Lemberg again; Warsaw had fallen; Ivangorod had fallen; Grodno and
Vilna had fallen. For the time, it is true, that great billow had spent
itself, but none knew yet what damage and dislocation had been wrought
on the steam-roller. Russia's friends assured us that the invincible
resolve of her people had suffered no damage, and expressed their
unshaken belief in the triumphant march of her destiny. But even the
most eloquent preachers of confidence found it difficult to explain
precisely on what their confidence was based.
That was not all, nor nearly all. In the Balkans Bulgaria had
joined the enemy; the fat white fox Ferdinand had kissed his hand
to his august brothers in Vienna and Berlin, and soon, when Servia
had been crushed, they would meet, and in each other's presence
confirm the salutation, and be-Kaiser and be-Czar each other. From
one side the Austro-German advance had begun, from the other the
Bulgarian, and it was certain that in a few weeks we should see Servia
extinguished--exterminated even as Belgium had been. It was useless to
imagine that all the despairing gallantry of that mountain people could
stand against the double invasion, or to speak of the resistance in
the impregnable mountain passes, which would take months to overcome.
Such talk was optimism gone mad, even as in the Retreat from Mons
certain incredible tacticians in the Press assured us that this was all
part of a strategic move, whereby the German lines of communication
would be lengthened. Certainly their lines of communication were
being lengthened, for they were pressing the Allies, who were totally
unable to stand against that first rush, across half France. So now
only insane interpreters could give encouraging comments on the news
from Servia. Servia, who had been but a king's pawn to open the savage
game that was being played over the length and breadth of Europe, was
taken and swept off the board; in a few weeks at the most we should
see the power of Germany extending unbroken from Antwerp on the
West to Constantinople on the East. Allied to Bulgaria and Turkey,
with Servia crushed, the way to the East, should she choose to go
Eastwards, lay open and undefended in front of her. It seemed more than
possible, too, that Greece, who had invited the troops of the Allies
to Salonika, would join the triumphant advance of the Central Empires.
Our diplomacy, as if it had been some card game played by children,
had been plucked from our hands and scattered over the nursery table;
every chance that had been ours had been thrown on to the rubbish
heap, and Germany, going to the rubbish heap, had picked up our lost
opportunities and shown us how to use them. It was impossible (it would
also have been silly) to be optimistic over these blunders; the Balkan
business was going as badly as it possibly could.
There was worse yet. Before the end of the month no one, unless,
like the ostrich, he buried his eyes in the sand and considered that
because he saw nothing there was nothing to see, had any real hope of
a successful issue to the Dardanelles expedition, and it was with an
aching sense of regret that one recalled the brave days when the _Queen
Elizabeth_ went thundering into the Straits, and we were told that but
a mile or two divided us from victory. But what miles! They seemed
quite sufficient, to divide us, even as when on board ship you are told
that only a plank lies between yourself and a watery grave, the plank
will do very well indeed to keep off the watery grave. That mile or two
had the same stubborn quality; months of valiant endeavour, endless
sacrifice, and sickening mistakes had not brought us any nearer our
goal.
It was useless to blink these obvious facts, and I found one morning
that it would be wiser to sit down and just stare them in the face,
get used to them, as far as might be, rather than shuffle them out of
sight, or pretend to see silver linings to clouds which, in spite of
the proverb, had not got any. There was a pit of clouds. Somehow that
must be explored. It was no use to pretend to put a lid on it, and say
there was no such pit. I had to go down into it.
I descended then into this "black tremendous sea of cloud." It was not
the invariable daily tale of ill-success in the war that caused it to
form in my brain, though I suppose it was that which consolidated it.
It came like an obsession. I had gone to bed one night with hope of
good news next day; I had taken pleasure in my jolly new house! I had
dined with friends and I slept well. But when I woke the Thing was
there. There was no bad news in the paper that morning, but in the
papers and in my bed, and about my path, and in my breakfast, there
was a blackening poison that spread and sprouted like some infernal
mushroom of plague. I found that I did not care for anything any more;
there was the root of this obsession. I thought of the friends I should
presently meet when I went out to my work, and the thought of them
roused no feeling of any kind. There was a letter from Francis, saying
that in a week's time he would have three days' leave, and proposed
that he should spend them with me. There was a letter from Kino, saying
that he had found the book which I so much wanted, and would bring it
round after breakfast, and should we go out, as we had vaguely planned,
that afternoon to Kew, and get the country whiff from the flaming
autumn? Certainly if he liked, thought I, for it does not matter. I did
not want to go, nor did I want not to go; it was all one, for over all
and in all was the blackness of the pit of clouds. We went accordingly,
and to me his face and his presence were no more than the face and the
presence of any stranger in the street. He had lost his meaning, he was
nonsense; it might have been some gesticulating machine that walked by
me. We looked at the flaring towers of golden and russet leaf, and I
saw them as you see something through the wrong end of a telescope. I
saw them through glass, through a diving bell. The sun was warm, the
sky was flecked with the loveliest mackerel scales of cloud; I was
with a friend stepping along mossy paths below the beech-trees, and
within me was a centre-point of consciousness that only wailed and
cried out at the horror of existence. The glory of the autumn day was
as magnificent as ever; the smell of the earth and the tea-like odour
of dry leaves had in itself all the sting and thrill that belonged to
it, and by my side was the friend with whom the laying of linoleum had
been so wonderful a delight, because we laid it together, and I was cut
off from it all. Everything was no more than dried flowers, sapless,
brittle and colourless.
Those days were no more than hours of existence, to which somehow my
flesh clung, though the fact of existence was just that which was so
tragic and so irremediable. By occupying myself, by doing anything
definite that required attention, even if it was only acknowledging
the receipt of subscriptions, or of writing begging letters on behalf
of the fund for which I worked, I could cling to the sheer cliff
and still keep below me that sea of cloud. But the moment that the
automatism only of life was wanted, the sea rose and engulfed me again.
When I walked along a street, when I sat down to eat, when, tired with
conscious effort of the mind, I relaxed attention, it drowned me. The
effort to keep my head above it was infinitely fatiguing, and when
at nights, having been unable to find something more to do, however
trivial, or when, unable to hold the dam-gate any longer, I went up to
bed, the nightmare of existence yelled out and smothered me. Huge and
encompassing, it surged about a pinprick of consciousness which was
myself; black wrinkled clouds brooded from zenith to horizon, and I
knew that beyond the horizon, and to innumerable horizons beyond that,
there reached that interminable blackness _in saecula saeculorum._ Or,
again, as in some feverish dream, behold, it was I, who just before
had been a pinprick in everlasting time and space, who now swelled up
to infinite dimensions, and was surrounded for ever and ever by gross
and infinitesimal nothingness. At one moment I was nothing set in the
middle of cosmic darkness; at the next I was cosmic darkness itself,
set in a microscopic loneliness, an alpha and omega of the everlasting
midnight. No footstep fell there, no face looked out from it, neither
of God nor of devil, nor of human kind. I was alone, as I had always
been alone; here was the truth of it, for it was but a fancy figment
that there was a scheme, a connection, a knitting of the members of the
world to each other, and of them to God. I had made that up myself; it
was but one of the foolish stories that I had often busied myself with.
But I knew better now; I was alone, and all was said.
Now there are many who have been through much darker and deeper waters
than these, without approaching real melancholia. To the best of my
belief I did no more than paddle at the edge of them. Certainly they
seemed to close over me, except for that one fact that even where they
were deepest, any manual or mental act that required definite thought
was sufficient for the moment to give me a breath of air. All pleasure,
and, so it seemed to me, all love had become obscured, but there was
still some sense of decency left that prevented me from lying down on
the floor, and saying in the Italian phrase, "_Non po' combattere._"
There was a double consciousness still. I said to myself, "I give
up!" but I didn't act as if I gave up, nor did I tell another human
soul that in myself I had done so. I confessed to depression, but
didn't talk about it. I wrote a perfectly normal and cordial letter to
Francis, saying how welcome he would be, though I felt that there was
no such person. Still, I wrote to him, and did not seriously expect
that my note would be returned through the dead-letter office. And this
is precisely the reason why I have written these last pages; it is to
assure all those who know, from inside, what such void and darkness
means, that the one anchor is employment, and the absolute necessity is
behaving in a normal manner. It does not seem worth while; it seems,
too, all but impossible, but it is not quite impossible, and there is
nothing which is so much worth while. Until you actually go over the
edge, stick to the edge. Do not look down into the abyss, keep your
eyes on such ground as there is, and find something there: a tuft of
grass, a fallen feather, the root of a wild plant--and look at it. If
you are so fortunate as to discover a little bare root there, something
easily helped, cover it up with a handful of kindly soil. (You will not
slip while you are doing this.) If a feather, be sure that some bird
has flown over, and dropped it from a sunlit wing; if a tuft of grass,
think of the seed from which it came. Besides, if God wills that you go
down into Hell, He is there also....
Hold on, just hold on. Sometimes you will look back on the edge to
which you clung, and will wonder what ailed you.
It was so with me. I merely held on till life, with its joys and its
ties, began to steal back into me, even as into a dark room the light
begins to filter at dawn. At no one second can you say that it is
lighter than it was the second before, but if you take a series of
seconds, you can see that light is in the ascendant. A certain Friday,
for instance, had been quite intolerable, but, just as you look out of
the window, and say "It is lighter," I found on Saturday that, though
nothing in the least cheerful had happened in the interval, I didn't
so earnestly object to existence, while a couple of days later I could
look back on Friday and wonder what it had all been about. What it had
been about I do not know now: some minute cell, I suppose, had worked
imperfectly, and lo! "the scheme of things entire" not only seemed,
but, I was convinced, was all wrong. Subjective though the disturbance
was, it could project itself and poison the world.
Two things certainly I learned from it, namely, that manual or mental
employment, hateful though it is to the afflicted, is less afflicting
than idleness; the second, that the more you keep your depression to
yourself the better. I wish that the infernal pessimists whose presence
blackens London would learn this. These ravens with their lugubrious
faces and their croaking accents, hop obscenely about from house to
house, with a wallet full of stories which always begin, "They say
that--" and there follows a tissue of mournful prognostications. They
project their subjective disturbance, and their tale beginning "They
say that--" or "I am told that--" generally means that Mr. A. and Mr.
B., having nothing to do, and nothing to think about, have sat by the
fire and ignorantly wondered what is going to happen. Having fixed on
the worst thing, whatever it is, that their bilious imagination can
suggest, they go out to lunch, and in accents of woe proceed to relate
that "They say that--" and state all the dismal forebodings which their
solitary meditations have hatched. In fact, the chief reason for which
I wish that I was a Member of Parliament is that I could then bring
in a Bill (or attempt to do so) for the Suppression of Pessimists. I
would also gladly vote for a Bill that provided for the Suppression of
Extreme Optimists on the same grounds, namely, that to be told that
the Kaiser has cancer, and that the burgesses of Berlin are already
starving, leads to a reaction such as the pessimists produce by direct
means. To be told that the Russians are incapable of further resistance
on the authority of "They say that--" depresses everybody at once;
and to be told that there isn't a potato to be had in all Germany
for love or money (particularly money) gives rise to an alcoholic
cheerfulness which dies out and leaves you with a headache of deferred
hopes. These grinning optimists were particularly hard to bear when
the terrible Retreat from Mons was going on, for they screamed with
delight at the notion that we were lengthening out the German lines
of communication, which subsequently would be cut, as by a pair of
nail-scissors lightly wielded, and the flower of the German army neatly
plucked like a defenceless wayside blossom. The same smiling idiots
were to the fore again during the great Russian retreat, and told us to
wait, finger on lip, with rapturous eyes, till the Germans had reached
the central steppes of Russia, when they would all swiftly expire of
frosts, Cossacks and inanition. But, after all, these rose-coloured
folk do very little harm; they make us go about our work with a heady
sense of exhilaration, which, though it soon passes off, is by no means
unpleasant. At the worst extreme optimists are only fools on the right
side, whereas pessimists are bores and beasts on the wrong one.
Pessimists have had a high old time all this month. They do not exactly
rejoice when things go ill for us, but misfortune has a certain sour
satisfaction for them, because it fulfils what they thought (and
said) in September. Thus now they nod and sigh, and proceed to tell
us what they augur for November. If only they would keep their misery
to themselves, nobody would care how miserable they are; but the
gratuitous diffusion of it is what should be made illegal. For the
microbe of pessimism is the most infectious of bacteria; it spreads
in such a manner that all decent-minded folk, when they have fallen
victims to it, ought surely (on the analogy of what they would do if
it was influenza) to shut themselves up and refuse to see anybody. But
because the disease is one of the mind, it appears that it is quite
proper for the sufferer to go and sneeze in other people's faces. There
ought to be a board of moral health, which by its regulations would
make it criminal to spread mental disorders, such as pessimism. I had
so severe an attack of it myself, when the clouds encompassed me, that
I have a certain right to propose legislation on the subject. Those
afflicted by the painful disease which, like typhoid, is only conveyed
through the mouth, in terms of articulate speech, should be fined some
moderate sum for any speech that was likely to propagate pessimism. If
the disease is acute, and the sufferer feels himself in serious danger
of bursting unless he talks, he would of course be at liberty to shut
himself up in any convenient room out of earshot, and talk till he felt
better. Only it should be on his responsibility that his conversation
should not be overheard by anybody, and, in suspension of the common
law of England, a wife should be competent to witness against her
husband.
It is not because the ravens are such liars that I complain, for
lying is the sort of thing that may happen to anybody, but it is the
depressing nature of their lies. The famous national outburst of lying
that took place over the supposed passage of hundreds of thousands of
Russians through England on their way to the battle-fields of France
and Flanders was harmless, inspiriting lying. So, too, the splendid
mendacity that seized so many of our citizens on the occasion of the
second Zeppelin raid. That ubiquitous airship I verily believe was seen
hovering over every dwelling-house in London; it hovered in Kensington,
in Belgravia, in Mayfair, in Hampstead, in Chelsea, and the best of it
was that it never came near these districts at all. In fact, it became
a mere commonplace that it hovered over your house, and a more soaring
breed of liars arose. One asserted that on looking up he had seen their
horrid German faces leaning over the side of the car; another, that the
cigar-shaped shadow of it passed over his blind. Of course, it passed
over Brompton Square, on which the Zeppelinians were preparing to
drop bombs, thinking that the dome of the Oratory was the dome of St.
Paul's, and that they had thus a good chance of destroying the Bank of
England. But in the stillness of the night, amid the soft murmurs of
the anti-aircraft guns, a guttural voice from above was heard to say,
"Nein: das ist nicht St Paul's," and the engine of destruction passed
on, leaving us unharmed. Was not that a fortunate thing?
Of course, by the time the Zeppelins began to visit us, we had all had
a good deal of practice in lying, which accounted for the gorgeous
oriental colouring of such amazing imaginings. But the pioneers
of this great revival of the cult of Ananias, were undoubtedly
that multitude whom none can number, who were ready to produce (or
manufacture) any amount of evidence to prove that soon after the
outbreak of the war battalions of Russian troops in special trains,
with blinds drawn down, were dashing through the country. It is a
thousand pities that some serious and industrious historian was not
commissioned by his Government to collect the evidence and issue it in
tabulated form, for it would have proved an invaluable contribution
to psychology. There was never any first-hand evidence on the subject
(for the simple reason that the subject had no real existence), but
the mass of secondhand evidences went far to prove the non-existent.
From Aberdeen to Southampton there was scarcely a station at which a
porter had not seen these army corps and told somebody's gardener.
The accounts tallied remarkably, the trains invariably had their
blinds drawn down, and occasionally bearded soldiers peered out of the
windows. There was a camp of them on Salisbury Plain, and hundreds of
Englishmen who knew no language but their own, distinctly heard them
talking Russian to each other. Sometimes stations (as at Reading)
had platforms boarded up to exclude the public, and the public from
neighbouring eminences saw the bearded soldiers drinking quantities of
tea out of samovars. This was fine imaginative stuff, for the samovar,
of course, is an urn, and nobody but a Russian, surely, would drink
tea out of an urn. There was collateral evidence, too: one day the
_Celtic_ was mined somewhere in the North Sea; she had on board tons of
ammunition and big guns, and for a while the hosts of Russia did not
appear in the fighting line, because they had remained on Salisbury
Plain till fresh supplies of ammunition came. Bolder spirits essayed
higher flights: At Swindon Station, so the porter told the gardener,
they had been seen walking about the platform stamping the snow off
their boots, which proved they had come from far North, where the snow
is of so perdurable a quality that it travels like blocks of ice from
Norwegian lakes without apparently melting even in the middle of a
hot September. Or again, in the neighbourhood of Hatfield the usual
gardener had heard that a _képi_ had been picked up on the road, and
what do you think was the name of the maker printed inside it? Why, the
leading military outfitter of Nijni-Novgorod! There was glory for you,
as Humpty-Dumpty said. The gardener fortunately knew who the leading
military outfitter of Nijni-Novgorod was, while regarded as a proof
what more could anybody want? How could a Russian _képi_ have been
dropped on the North Road unless at least a hundred thousand Russians
had been going in special trains through England? I suppose you would
not want them _all_ to throw their _képis_ away.
There were hundreds of such stories, none first hand, but overwhelming
in matter of cumulative secondhand evidence, all springing from
nowhere but the unassisted brain of ordinary Englishmen. The wish
was father to the thought; in the great peril that still menaced the
French and English battle-line, we all wanted hundreds of thousands of
Russians, and so we said that they were passing through. Some cowardly
rationalist, I believe, has explained the whole matter by saying that
some firm telegraphed that a hundred thousand Russians (whereby he
meant Russian eggs) were arriving. I scorn the truckling materialism
of this. The Russian stories were invented, bit by bit, even as coral
grows, by innumerable and busy liars, spurred on by the desire that
their fabrications might be true. Bitter animosities sprang up between
those who did and those who did not believe the Russian Saga. Single
old ladies, to whom the idea that Russia was pouring in to help us was
very comforting, altered their wills and cut off faithless nephews,
and the most stubborn Thomases amongst us were forced to confess that
there seemed to be a good deal to say for it, while the fact that the
War Office strenuously denied the whole thing was easily accounted for.
Of course the War Office denied it, for it didn't want the Germans to
know. It would be a fine surprise for the Germans on the West Front to
find themselves one morning facing serried rows of Russians.... They
would be utterly bewildered, for they had been under the impression
that Russia was far away East, on the other side of the Fatherland; but
here were the Russian armies! They would think their compasses had gone
mad; they would have been quite giddy with surprise, and have got that
lost feeling which does so much to undermine the morale of troops. Oh,
a great stroke!
But all these Russian and Zeppelin Saga were good heady, encouraging
lies, tonic instead of lowering, like the dejected inventions of
prostrate pessimists. I do not defend, on principle, the habit of
making up stories and saying that a porter at Reading told your
gardener; but, given that you are going to do that sort of thing, I do
maintain that you are bound to invent such stories as will encourage
and not depress your credulous friends. You have no right to attempt
to rob them of their most precious possession in times like these,
namely, the power of steadfast resistance of the spirit to trouble and
anxiety, by inventing further causes of depression. The law forbids
you to take away a man's forks and spoons; it ought also to forbid the
dissemination of such false news as will deprive him of his appetite
for his mutton chop.
Indeed, I fancy that by the law of England as laid down in the
statute-book it is treasonable in times of national crisis to
discourage the subjects of the King, and I wonder whether it would not
be possible, as there has been so little grouse-shooting this year, to
have a grouser-shoot instead. A quantity of old birds want clearing
off. Guns might be placed, let us say, in butts erected along the south
side of Piccadilly, and the grousers would be driven from the moors
of Mayfair by a line of beaters starting from Oxford Street. The game
would break cover, so I suppose, from Dover Street, Berkeley Street,
Half Moon Street, and so on, and to prevent their escaping into Regent
Street on the one side and Park Lane on the other, stops would be
placed at the entrance of streets debouching here in the shape of huge
posters announcing victories by land and sea for the Allied forces.
These the grousers would naturally be unable to pass, and thus they
would be driven out into Piccadilly and shot. This would take the
morning, and after a good lunch at the Ritz Hotel the shooters would
proceed to the covers of Kensington. Other days would, of course, be
arranged....
But all this month the devastating tide swept on through Serbia.
Occasionally there were checks, as, for a moment, it dashed against
some little reef before submerging it; but soon wave succeeding wave
overleaped such barriers, and now Serbia lies under the waters of the
inundation. And in these shortening days of autumn the sky grows red in
the East with the dawning of new fires of battle, and to the watchers
there it goes down red in the West, where from Switzerland to the sea,
behind the trenches, the graveyards stretch themselves out over the
unsown fields of France.