the wall. Nor is it entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it seems to
cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if I ran my finger down that
strip of the wall it would, at a certain point, mount and descend a
small tumulus, a smooth tumulus like those barrows on the South Downs
which are, they say, either tombs or camps. Of the two I should prefer
them to be tombs, desiring melancholy like most English people, and
finding it natural at the end of a walk to think of the bones stretched
beneath the turf.... There must be some book about it. Some antiquary
must have dug up those bones and given them a name.... What sort of a
man is an antiquary, I wonder? Retired Colonels for the most part, I
daresay, leading parties of aged labourers to the top here, examining
clods of earth and stone, and getting into correspondence with the
neighbouring clergy, which, being opened at breakfast time, gives them a
feeling of importance, and the comparison of arrow-heads necessitates
cross-country journeys to the county towns, an agreeable necessity both
to them and to their elderly wives, who wish to make plum jam or to
clean out the study, and have every reason for keeping that great
question of the camp or the tomb in perpetual suspension, while the
Colonel himself feels agreeably philosophic in accumulating evidence on
both sides of the question. It is true that he does finally incline to
believe in the camp; and, being opposed, indites a pamphlet which he is
about to read at the quarterly meeting of the local society when a
stroke lays him low, and his last conscious thoughts are not of wife or
child, but of the camp and that arrowhead there, which is now in the
case at the local museum, together with the foot of a Chinese murderess,
a handful of Elizabethan nails, a great many Tudor clay pipes, a piece
of Roman pottery, and the wine-glass that Nelson drank out of--proving I
really don't know what.
No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. And if I were to get up at
this very moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is really--what
shall we say?--the head of a gigantic old nail, driven in two hundred
years ago, which has now, owing to the patient attrition of many
generations of housemaids, revealed its head above the coat of paint,
and is taking its first view of modern life in the sight of a
white-walled fire-lit room, what should I gain?--Knowledge? Matter for
further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up.
And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of
witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs,
interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And
the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for
beauty and health of mind increases.... Yes, one could imagine a very
pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and
blue in the open fields. A world without professors or specialists or
house-keepers with the profiles of policemen, a world which one could
slice with one's thought as a fish slices the water with his fin,
grazing the stems of the water-lilies, hanging suspended over nests of
white sea eggs.... How peaceful it is down here, rooted in the centre of
the world and gazing up through the grey waters, with their sudden
gleams of light, and their reflections--if it were not for Whitaker's
Almanack--if it were not for the Table of Precedency!
I must jump up and see for myself what that mark on the wall really
is--a nail, a rose-leaf, a crack in the wood?
Here is nature once more at her old game of self-preservation. This
train of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere waste of energy,
even some collision with reality, for who will ever be able to lift a
finger against Whitaker's Table of Precedency? The Archbishop of
Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord High
Chancellor is followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody follows
somebody, such is the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great thing is to
know who follows whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature
counsels, comfort you, instead of enraging you; and if you can't be
comforted, if you must shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark on
the wall.
I understand Nature's game--her prompting to take action as a way of
ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I
suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action--men, we assume,
who don't think. Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one's
disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have
grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which
at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the
shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real. Thus,
waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light
and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping
solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is
a proof of some existence other than ours. That is what one wants to be
sure of.... Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It comes from a
tree; and trees grow, and we don't know how they grow. For years and
years they grow, without paying any attention to us, in meadows, in
forests, and by the side of rivers--all things one likes to think about.
The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot afternoons; they paint
rivers so green that when a moorhen dives one expects to see its
feathers all green when it comes up again. I like to think of the fish
balanced against the stream like flags blown out; and of water-beetles
slowly raising domes of mud upon the bed of the river. I like to think
of the tree itself: first the close dry sensation of being wood; then
the grinding of the storm; then the slow, delicious ooze of sap. I like
to think of it, too, on winter's nights standing in the empty field with
all leaves close-furled, nothing tender exposed to the iron bullets of
the moon, a naked mast upon an earth that goes tumbling, tumbling, all
night long. The song of birds must sound very loud and strange in June;
and how cold the feet of insects must feel upon it, as they make
laborious progresses up the creases of the bark, or sun themselves upon
the thin green awning of the leaves, and look straight in front of them
with diamond-cut red eyes.... One by one the fibres snap beneath the
immense cold pressure of the earth, then the last storm comes and,
falling, the highest branches drive deep into the ground again. Even so,
life isn't done with; there are a million patient, watchful lives still
for a tree, all over the world, in bedrooms, in ships, on the pavement,
lining rooms, where men and women sit after tea, smoking cigarettes. It
is full of peaceful thoughts, happy thoughts, this tree. I should like
to take each one separately--but something is getting in the way....
Where was I? What has it all been about? A tree? A river? The Downs?
Whitaker's Almanack? The fields of asphodel? I can't remember a thing.
Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing.... There is a vast
upheaval of matter. Someone is standing over me and saying--
"I'm going out to buy a newspaper."
"Yes?"
"Though it's no good buying newspapers.... Nothing ever happens. Curse
this war; God damn this war!... All the same, I don't see why we should
have a snail on our wall."
Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.