MR STODHAM, THE RESPECTABLE MAN, AND THE DRYAD
To Mr Stodham, I think, Mr Torrance’s books were the man. He--perhaps
he alone in England--possessed a full set of the thirty-three volumes
produced by Mr Torrance under his own name in thirteen years. “It is
wonderful,” said Ann once, “that the dancing of a pen over a sheet of
paper can pay the rent and the baker’s bill, and it hardly seems right.
But, still, it appears there are people born that can do nothing else,
and they must live like the rest of us.... And I will say that Mr
Torrance is one of the best of us, though he has that peculiarity.”
Mr Stodham could not trust himself to speak. He really liked Ann:
furthermore, he knew that she was wiser than he: finally, everyone at
that moment had something better to think of, because Jack and Roland
had put on the gloves. Mr Stodham, consequently, quoted George Borrow:
“There’s the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I
would gladly live for ever. Dosta, we’ll now go to the tents and put on
the gloves; and I’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to
be alive, brother.”
Jack overheard him, and at the end of the round said, “What was that,
Mr Stodham? say it again.” When the words of Jasper had been repeated,
“Jolly good,” said Jack, “but what puzzles me is how a man who knew
that could bother to write a book. There must have been something the
matter with him. Perhaps he didn’t really believe what he wrote.” And
so they had another round.
Mr Stodham liked everything at Abercorran House. Liking was his chief
faculty, and there it had unstinted exercise. Probably he liked
the very wife whom he escaped by going either to the country or to
Abercorran House. An accident had first brought him among the Morgans.
One day as he happened to be passing down the farm lane a child threw
a ball unintentionally over into the Wilderness. After it went Mr
Stodham in an instant, not quite missing the nails at the top of the
fence. The long grass of the Wilderness and his own bad sight kept
the ball hidden until the child went away in despair, unknown to
him, for he continued the search. There perhaps he would have been
searching still, if the Wilderness had not been built over, and if
Roland had not come along and found man and ball almost in the same
moment. Here the matter could not end. For Mr Stodham, unawares, had
been reduced by a nail in the fence to a condition which the public
does not tolerate. It seems that he offered to wait for nightfall when
Roland had pointed out his misfortune. He was stubborn, to the verge
of being abject, in apologising for his presence, and, by implication,
for his existence, and in not wishing to cause any trouble to Roland
or the family. Gently but firmly Roland lured him upstairs and gave
him a pair of trousers beyond reproach. On the following day when he
reappeared, bearing the trousers and renewed apologies, the family,
out in the yard, was in full parliament assembled. He made a little
speech, cheered by everyone but Higgs. Presumably he was so fascinated
by the scene that the cheering did not disconcert him. He could not get
away, especially as his stick had been seized by Spot the fox-terrier,
who was now with apparently no inconvenience to himself, being whirled
round and round on the end of it by Jack. Ann came out with his own
trousers thoroughly reformed, and she had to be thanked. Lastly, Mr
Morgan carried him off before the stick had been recovered. Next day,
therefore, he had to come again in search of the stick, a priceless
favourite before Spot had eaten it. Mr Morgan consoled him and cemented
the acquaintance by giving him an ash stick with a handle formed by
Nature in the likeness of a camel’s head. Mr Morgan said that the stick
had been cut on Craig-y-Dinas--the very place where the ash stick was
cut, which a certain Welshman was carrying on London Bridge when he was
espied by a magician, who asked to be taken to the mother tree, which
in as long as it takes to walk three hundred miles was done, with the
result that a cave was found on Craig-y-Dinas, full of treasure which
was guarded by King Arthur and his knights, who were, however, sleeping
a sleep only to be disturbed by a certain bell, which the Welshman by
ill luck did ring, with the predicted result, that the king and his
knights rose up in their armour and so terrified him that he forgot the
word which would have sent them to sleep again, and he dropped all his
treasure, ran for his life, and could never more find cave, stick, or
magician for all his seeking. Mr Stodham responded in a sententious
pretty speech, saying in effect that with such a stick he needed no
other kind of treasure than those it would inevitably conduct him
to--the hills, rivers, woods, and meadows of the home-counties, and
some day, he hoped, to Craig-y-Dinas itself.
Thus Mr Stodham came again and again, to love, honour, and obey the
ways of Abercorran House, just as he did the entirely different ways of
Mrs Stodham’s house. He, and no other, taught Philip the way to that
piece of country which became ours. Harry and Lewis, still under ten,
awakened in him a faculty for spinning yarns. What they were nobody but
those three knew; for the performance was so special and select that
the two boys formed the sole audience. They revealed nothing of what
enchanted them. Or was there anything more than at first appeared in
Harry’s musing remark on being questioned about Mr Stodham’s stories:
“Mr Stodham’s face is like a rat,” a remark which was accompanied by a
nibbling grimace which caused smiles of recognition and some laughter?
“Yes,” added Lewis, penitent at the laughter he had provoked, “a _very
good_ rat!” Perhaps the shy, sandy man’s shrunken face was worked up
to an unwonted--and therefore comical--freedom of expression in the
excitement of these tales, and this fascinated the boys and made them
his firm supporters. He was a tall, thin, sandy-haired, sandy-bearded
man with spectacles. As if tobacco smoke had mummified him, his face
was of a dried yellow. He stooped slightly and walked rapidly with long
strides. Nobody had professed to find anything great or good in him,
yet several different kinds of men spoke of him with liking as well as
pity. If there was something exceptional about this most ordinary man,
it was his youthfulness. It had been said that he was too dull to grow
old. But youthful he was, though it is hard to say how, since he truly
was dull, and if he had not been indolent must have been a bore--but
he was too modest for anyone to allow him to bore. As you walked
behind him you had little doubt of his youthfulness. Something in the
loose-jointed lightness and irresponsibility of his gait suggested a
boy, and if you had been following him with this thought, and he turned
round to greet you, the wrinkled, smoky face was a great surprise.
There was something in his nature corresponding to this loose-jointed
walk. The dogs, I think, knew it: they could do what they liked with
him, and for them he carried sugar as a regular cargo.
Thus, Mr Stodham began to be interwoven with that fellowship. I was
perhaps too old for his romantic tales, but I have heard him telling Mr
Morgan what he considered interesting in his own life. Whatever it was,
it revealed his shyness, or his excitability, or his innocence. Once
he gave a long explanation of how he came to set an uncommon value on
a certain book which he was lending to Mr Morgan. Some winters before,
something caused him to wake at midnight and sit up to listen, in spite
of the usual powerful inclination to sleep again. At a sharp noise
on the pane he threw up the window. All the flints of the road were
clear in an unusual light. The white face of a policeman was looking
up at him, and he heard the words “Fire!... Come down.” Rapidly half
dressing as if executing an order which he did not understand, he was
outside on the pavement in a minute. It was next door. The building
was losing all resemblance to a barber’s shop; like mad birds the
flames flew across it and out at the shuttered windows. The policeman
was hammering at the door, to waken those who were in their beds above
the fire. Heavily they slept, and some minutes passed before a man
came down carrying an umbrella, a woman arranging her hair. The shriek
of a cat followed them out of the door, but so also did the flames.
Soon the shop was an oblong box containing one great upright body of
fire, through which could be seen the twisted skeleton remains of iron
bedsteads. Quietly the street had become packed with onlookers--curious
neighbours, passers-by, and a few night-wanderers who had souls above
merely keeping warm by standing against the walls of bakeries. There
were three fire engines. With a low hum the jets of water yielded
themselves to the fire and were part of it. Suddenly a fireman noticed
that Mr Stodham’s own window was lit from within, thought that the
flames had penetrated so far, and was about to direct the hose on it
when Mr Stodham shook off the charm of the tumultuous glare to explain
that he had left a lamp burning. The man went with him into the house,
but could find no fire. Left alone in his room Mr Stodham noticed
that it was hot, pleasantly hot for a January midnight. The wall that
he leaned against was pleasant until he remembered the fire on the
other side. He made haste to save his papers. Instead of sorting them
roughly there, he proposed to remove, not the separate drawers, but
the whole desk. He forgot that it had only entered the house, in the
first place, after having the castors detached, and omitting to do
this now, he wedged it firmly between the walls and so barricaded the
main passage of the house. He took out all the contents of all the
drawers, deposited them with a neighbour whom he had never before seen.
Then he returned to his room. He was alone with his books, and had to
choose among them, which he should take and save. They numbered several
hundred, including a shelf of the very first books he had read to
himself. A large proportion consisted of the books of his youth. Having
been lived through by the eager, docile Stodham, these poems, romances,
essays, autobiographies, had each a genuine personality, however
slight the difference of its cover from its neighbour’s. Another class
represented aspirations, regrets, oblivions: half cut, dustier than
the rest, these wore strange, sullen, ironical, or actually hostile
looks. Some had been bought because it was inevitable that a young man
should have a copy. Others, chiefly volumes in quarto or folio, played
something like the parts of family portraits in a house of one of the
new-rich. An unsuspecting ostentation had gone with some affection to
their purchase. They gave a hint of “the dark backward and abysm of
time” to that small room, dingy but new.... He leaned against the hot
wall, receiving their various looks, returning them. Several times he
bent forward to clutch this one or that, but saw another which he could
not forsake for it, and so left both. He moved up close to the rows: he
stood on tip-toe, he knelt. Some books he touched, others he opened. He
put each one back. The room was silent with memory. He might have put
them all in safety by this time. The most unexpected claims were made.
For example, there was a black-letter “Morte d’Arthur” in olive calf.
He had paid so much for it that he had to keep its existence secret:
brown paper both concealed and protected it. He did, in fact, put this
with a few others, chosen from time to time, on a chair. Only a very
few were without any claims--histories and the like, of which there
are thousands of copies, all the same. The unread and never-to-be-read
volumes put in claims unexpectedly. No refusal could be made without a
qualm. He looked at the select pile on the chair dissatisfied. Rather
than take them only he would go away empty. “You had better look sharp,
sir,” said a fireman, vaulting over the desk. Mr Stodham looked at
the mute multitude of books and saw all in a flash. Nevertheless not
one could he make up his mind to rescue. But on the mantelpiece lay a
single book until now unnoticed--a small eighteenth century book in
worn contemporary binding, an illustrated book of travels in Africa by
a Frenchman--which he had long ago paid twopence for and discontinued
his relations with it. He swiftly picked up this book and was,
therefore, able to lend it to Mr Morgan for the sake of the plates. But
after all he saved all his other books also. The fire did not reach his
house, and the one thing damaged was the desk which the firemen had to
leap on to and over in passing through to the back of the house.
Mr Stodham, in spite of professing a poor opinion of the subject, was
delighted in his quiet way to speak of himself. He was at this time
a nearly middle-aged clerk, disappointed in a tranquil style, and
beginning to regard it as something to his credit that when he had
been four years married he had talked a good deal of going to the
colonies. If only he had gone--his imagination was unequal to the task
of seeing what might have happened if only he had gone. The regret or
pretence of it gave him a sort of shadowy grandeur by suggesting that
it was from a great height he had fallen to his present position in a
suburban maisonette. Here by some means he had secured to himself the
exclusive rights to a little room known as “The Study.” This room was
narrower than it was high, and allowed no more than space for his table
between the two walls of books, when he sat facing the French window,
with the door behind. He looked out on a pink almond-tree, and while
this flowered he could see nothing else but the tree and the south-east
sky above it; at other seasons the hind parts of many houses like his
own were unmistakeable. At night a green blind was let down over the
window before the lamp was lit. In this room, and in no other place but
Abercorran House, he was at home. Seated at that table, smoking, he
felt equal to anything with which his wife or the world could afflict
him. He desired no change in the room, beyond a slowly increasing
length to accommodate his increasing books. He would have liked to open
the windows more often than, being of the French pattern, was deemed
safe. The room was completely and unquestionably his own. For his wife
it was too shabby and too much out of her influence; she would not take
her fingers from the door-handle when she had to enter it. His children
were stiff and awed in it, because in earlier days he had been strict
in demanding silence in its neighbourhood. Much as he wished that they
would forget the old rule they could not; he liked to see them standing
at the door looking towards him and the window, but they made haste to
be off. As to the servant, she dreaded being caught in the room since
the mistress had commanded her to dust it daily, and the master to
leave it to him.
Mr Morgan, Mr Torrance, and in later years myself, he admitted to
the Study. Acquaintances he received with his wife in their clean
and expensive drawing-room. Husband and wife were in harmony when
entertaining a few of those whom Mrs Stodham called their friends. On
these rare occasions the defensive combination of her slightly defiant
pride and his kindly resignation was a model of unconscious tact. If
there was a man--which seldom came about--Mr Stodham would ask him into
the Study. The gas was slowly lighted, the gas-stove more slowly or
not at all. The intruder would remark what a lot of books there were,
and how he never had any time for reading. There was only one chair,
and he was compelled to sit in it and to light a cigarette. Mr Stodham
himself was loth to smoke there in profane company, but dallied with
an unaccustomed cigarette, or, if he took a pipe, soon rapped out on
the stove with it some variation upon the theme of discontent. In
either case his gentle but disturbed presence hung oppressively on the
visitor, who very soon took the hint from that helpless but determined
face, to propose a return to the drawing-room. There Mrs Stodham
frequently made the remark: “What a lot of books John has,” nodding
complacently and with the implication partly that she despised them,
partly that she saw their worth as a family distinction. At the end of
such an evening or after any unpleasantness Mr Stodham would go into
the Study, stick an unlit pipe between his teeth, open a book and read
very slowly, stretching his legs out, for five minutes, then sigh,
stand up and look along the rows of books without seeing them, and go
up to bed before he had defined his dissatisfaction.
The Study was the scene of the most extraordinary thing he had to
relate. Once when he had been lying for several days in bed, weak and
fevered, he had a strong desire to go downstairs to the Study. Darkness
and tea-time were near, his wife and children were out, doubtless the
servant was reading something by the light of the red-hot kitchen
grate. The house was silent. Slowly the invalid went down and laid
his fingers on the handle of his door, which was opposite the foot
of the stairs. An unusual feeling of quiet expectancy had stolen on
him; nothing, he said, could have astonished him at that moment. He
had, however, no idea of what he was expecting until he had opened the
door to its full extent. Thus was disclosed, between his table and the
window, a beautiful female figure, half sitting, half reclining, as if
asleep, among a number of books which had remained on the floor during
his illness. Though he had not put on his spectacles before coming down
he saw perfectly, so clearly, as he said, that she seemed to gleam, as
if it was still full day with her. Her beautiful long black hair was
confined by a narrow fillet of gold, which made clear the loveliness of
her head. He said that only Mr Torrance could describe her properly.
No, he affirmed, if people smiled, it did not occur to him that the
nude looked awkward near a gas-stove. Nor had she any more need of its
warmth than the Elgin Marbles or the Bacchus in Titian’s “Bacchus and
Ariadne.” Yet she was not of marble or paint, but of flesh, though he
had seen nothing of the kind in his life. Her shoulders moved with
her breathing, and this as well as her attitude proclaimed that she
was mourning, some seconds before he heard her sob. He thought that
the figure and posture were the same as those in a Greek statue which
he had seen long before, in London or Paris. They had the remoteness
and austerity of marble along with something delicate, transient, and
alive. But if there could have been a doubt whether she was flesh or
stone, there was none that she was divine. In what way she was divine
he could not tell, but certainly she was, though in no visible way was
she different from the women of pictures and statues. He did not feel
that she would notice him. He was not shocked, or curious, but calm and
still expectant. He drew a deep breath and tried to make his trembling
body stand quite still by leaning against the wall to watch. He did
not suppose that she had come into his room in the ordinary way. He
had, on the other hand, a conviction that she had something to do with
his books, that she had emerged from them or one of them. A gap in the
bottom shelf, where stood the largest books, caught his eye and thrust
itself forward as a cave whence she had come. Yet she was as white as
Aphrodite newly risen from the unsailed ocean, and she diffused a sense
of open air, of space, of the wild pure air, about her, as if she lay
upon a rock at the sea edge or among mountain flowers instead of in
this narrow room. He concluded in a reasonable way that she was one of
the poets’ nymphs whom he had so often read of with lazy credulity.
Actually the words ran into his mind:
“Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains--
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.”
But he did not accept her as the Sicilian river. Other words crept
through his mind, as of “lorn Urania ... most musical of mourners,” and
of “lost Echo” seated “amid the voiceless mountains.” Still his brain
flew on, next causing him to see in her an incarnation of the morning
star, for from brow to foot she was very bright. But he came back again
to the idea of some goddess, or muse, or grace, or nymph, or Dryad--the
word Dryad recurring several times as if by inspiration; and thereafter
he referred to her as the Dryad.
It seemed to be the sound of the door-handle released some time after
the door was closed that caused her suddenly to become silent and
to raise her sea-gray glittering eyes towards him. She was gasping
for breath. “Air,” she cried, “Air--the wide air and light--air and
light.” Mr Stodham rushed forward past her and threw open one of the
French windows. She turned towards the air, drinking it with her lips
and also with her hands which opened and closed with motions like
leaves under water. Mr Stodham could not open the second window.
“Air,” cried the Dryad. So he thrust steadily and then violently at
the frame with his whole body until the window gave way, splintering
and crashing. Still moving as if drowning and vainly trying to rise,
the Dryad cried out for more of the air which now streamed into the
Study. By stretching out her hands now up and now on either side she
implored to be surrounded by an ocean of air. To Mr Stodham this was
a command. Sideways with head lowered he leaned heavily against both
walls in turn, struggling to overthrow them. He strode backwards and
forwards along the bookshelves, striking fiercely here and there in
the hope that the wall would yield and let in the heavenly air for the
Dryad. When he thought this vain he ran from room to room throwing
open or smashing each window until all had been done. “More air,” he
shouted. The last room was the drawing-room. Its windows having been
smashed, he set about doing what he had run out of his study to do. In
the middle of the drawing-room he began to make a fire. From floor to
ceiling the eager flames leapt at a bound; a widening circle of carpet
smouldered; and Mr Stodham, crouching low, shivering, holding his hands
to the heat, muttered “More air,” like an incantation. “The Dryad must
have more air. We must all have more air. Let the clean fire burn down
these walls and all the walls of London. So there will be more air, and
she will be free, all will be free.” As the carpet began to smoulder
under him he hopped from one foot to another, not muttering now, but
shrieking, “More air,” and at last leaping high as the flames, he ran
straight out into the street. He ran as if he were trying to escape
himself--which he was; for his nightgown and dressing-gown flared out
in sparks behind him, and from these he was running. He twisted and
leapt in his race, as if he had a hope of twisting or leaping out of
the flames....
This scene was regarded by us as humorous--I suppose because we knew
that Mr Stodham had survived it--but by Ann as terrible. She had a
great kindness for Mr Stodham; she even proposed to deliver him from
his wife by providing him with a room at Abercorran House: but if
he was not content with his servitude he could not imagine another
state....
Probably he fell down unconscious from his burns and exhaustion: he
remembered no more when many days later the delirium left him. That he
had attempted to set his house on fire was noted as an extraordinary
frenzy of influenza: Mrs Stodham, suspecting a malicious motive for
starting the fire in her drawing-room, particularly resented it. Such
portions of the story as he betrayed in his delirium drove her to
accuse him of having a shameful and disgusting mind.
On coming down to the Study from the sick room again he saw no Dryad.
He opened wide the new French windows, and stood looking at the dark
bole of the almond-tree, slender and straight, and all its blossom
suspended in one feathery pile against the sky. The airy marble of the
white clouds, the incorporeal sweetness of the flowers, the space and
majesty of the blue sky, the freshness of the air, each in turn and all
together recalled the Dryad. He shed tears in an intense emotion which
was neither pleasure nor pain.
Aurelius had a great admiration for Mr Stodham on the ground that he
did not write a poem about the Dryad. The story appealed also to Ann.
She referred in awe to “Mr Stodham’s statue.” She said: “There was a
statue in that condition in the church at home. Some renowned artist
carved it for a memorial to the Earl’s only daughter. But I could not
abide it in the cold, dark, old place. It wanted to be out under the
ash-trees, or in among the red roses and ferns. I did think it would
have looked best of all by the waterfall. These statues are a sort of
angels, and they don’t seem natural under a roof with ordinary people.
Out of doors it is different, or it would be, though I haven’t seen
angels or statues out of doors. But I have seen bathers, and they look
as natural as birds.”
“You are right, Ann,” said Mr Morgan, “and prettier than birds. The
other Sunday when I was out walking early I found a path that took me
for some way alongside a stream. There was a Gypsy caravan close to the
path, three or four horses scattered about, an old woman at the fire,
and several of the party in the water. I hurried on because I saw that
the swimmers were girls. But there was no need to hurry. Two of them,
girls of about fifteen with coal-black hair, caught sight of me, and
climbed out on to the bank before my eyes to beg. I walked on quickly
to give them a chance of reconsidering the matter, but it was no use.
Sixpence was the only thing that would turn them back. I wish now I had
not been so hasty in giving it. The girl put it in her mouth, after
the usual blessing, and ran back with her companion to the water. They
wanted money as well as air, Stodham. Your visitor was less alive.”
“For shame, sir,” interjected Ann, “she was not a Gypsy. She was an
honourable statue, and there is no laugh in the case at all.”
“Oh, but there is, Ann, and there always will be a laugh for some one
in these matters so long as some one else chooses to be as solemn as a
judge in public about them, and touchy, too, Ann. Don’t let us pretend
or even try to be angels. We have not the figure for it. I think there
is still a long future for men and women, if they have more and more
air, and enough sixpences to let them bathe, for example, in peace.”
“Very good,” concluded Ann, “but a bit parsonified, too.” She would
have added something, but could no longer ignore the fact that close
by stood the tall old watercress-man, Jack Horseman, patiently waiting
for the right moment to touch his hat. His Indian complexion had come
back to the old soldier, he was slightly tipsy, and he had a bunch
of cowslips in his hat. Mr Morgan disappeared. Ann went in with the
watercress for change. Philip and I took possession of Jack, to ask if
he had found that blackthorn stick he had often promised us.