“You never hear me,” the oyster might say, “howling round camps and
villages, making night hideous, frightening quiet folk out of their
lives. Why don’t you go to bed early, as I do? I never prowl round the
oyster-bed, fighting other gentlemen oysters, making love to lady oysters
already married. I never kill antelopes or missionaries. Why can’t you
live as I do on salt water and germs, or whatever it is that I do live
on? Why don’t you try to be more like me?”
An oyster has no evil passions, therefore we say he is a virtuous fish.
We never ask ourselves—“Has he any good passions?” A lion’s behaviour is
often such as no just man could condone. Has he not his good points
also?
Will the fat, sleek, “virtuous” man be as Welcome at the gate of heaven
as he supposes?
“Well,” St. Peter may say to him, opening the door a little way and
looking him up and down, “what is it now?”
“It’s me,” the virtuous man will reply, with an oily, self-satisfied
smile; “I should say, I—I’ve come.”
“Yes, I see you have come; but what is your claim to admittance? What
have you done with your three score years and ten?”
“Done!” the virtuous man will answer, “I have done nothing, I assure
you.”
“Nothing!”
“Nothing; that is my strong point; that is why I am here. I have never
done any wrong.”
“And what good have you done?”
“What good!”
“Aye, what good? Do not you even know the meaning of the word? What
human creature is the better for your having eaten and drunk and slept
these years? You have done no harm—no harm to yourself. Perhaps, if you
had you might have done some good with it; the two are generally to be
found together down below, I remember. What good have you done that you
should enter here? This is no mummy chamber; this is the place of men
and women who have lived, who have wrought good—and evil also, alas!—for
the sinners who fight for the right, not the righteous who run with their
souls from the fight.”
It was not, however, to speak of these things that I remembered _The
Amateur_ and its lessons. My intention was but to lead up to the story
of a certain small boy, who in the doing of tasks not required of him was
exceedingly clever. I wish to tell you his story, because, as do most
true tales, it possesses a moral, and stories without a moral I deem to
be but foolish literature, resembling roads that lead to nowhere, such as
sick folk tramp for exercise.
I have known this little boy to take an expensive eight-day clock to
pieces, and make of it a toy steamboat. True, it was not, when made,
very much of a steamboat; but taking into consideration all the
difficulties—the inadaptability of eight-day clock machinery to steamboat
requirements, the necessity of getting the work accomplished quickly,
before conservatively-minded people with no enthusiasm for science could
interfere—a good enough steamboat. With merely an ironing-board and a
few dozen meat-skewers, he would—provided the ironing-board was not
missed in time—turn out quite a practicable rabbit-hutch. He could make
a gun out of an umbrella and a gas-bracket, which, if not so accurate as
a Martini-Henry, was, at all events, more deadly. With half the
garden-hose, a copper scalding-pan out of the dairy, and a few Dresden
china ornaments off the drawing-room mantelpiece, he would build a
fountain for the garden. He could make bookshelves out of kitchen
tables, and crossbows out of crinolines. He could dam you a stream so
that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn. He knew how to make
red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other suchlike commodities
handy to have about a house. Among other things he learned how to make
fireworks, and after a few explosions of an unimportant character, came
to make them very well indeed. The boy who can play a good game of
cricket is liked. The boy who can fight well is respected. The boy who
can cheek a master is loved. But the boy who can make fireworks is
revered above all others as a boy belonging to a superior order of
beings. The fifth of November was at hand, and with the consent of an
indulgent mother, he determined to give to the world a proof of his
powers. A large party of friends, relatives, and school-mates was
invited, and for a fortnight beforehand the scullery was converted into a
manufactory for fireworks. The female servants went about in hourly
terror of their lives, and the villa, did we judge exclusively by smell,
one might have imagined had been taken over by Satan, his main premises
being inconveniently crowded, as an annex. By the evening of the fourth
all was in readiness, and samples were tested to make sure that no
contretemps should occur the following night. All was found to be
perfect.
The rockets rushed heavenward and descended in stars, the Roman candles
tossed their fiery balls into the darkness, the Catherine wheels sparkled
and whirled, the crackers cracked, and the squibs banged. That night he
went to bed a proud and happy boy, and dreamed of fame. He stood
surrounded by blazing fireworks, and the vast crowd cheered him. His
relations, most of whom, he knew, regarded him as the coming idiot of the
family, were there to witness his triumph; so too was Dickey Bowles, who
laughed at him because he could not throw straight. The girl at the
bun-shop, she also was there, and saw that he was clever.
The night of the festival arrived, and with it the guests. They sat,
wrapped up in shawls and cloaks, outside the hall door—uncles, cousins,
aunts, little boys and big boys, little girls and big girls, with, as the
theatre posters say, villagers and retainers, some forty of them in all,
and waited.
But the fireworks did not go off. Why they did not go off I cannot
explain; nobody ever _could_ explain. The laws of nature seemed to be
suspended for that night only. The rockets fell down and died where they
stood. No human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs. The crackers
gave one bang and collapsed. The Roman candles might have been English
rushlights. The Catherine wheels became mere revolving glow-worms. The
fiery serpents could not collect among them the spirit of a tortoise.
The set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast and the captain, and then
went out. One or two items did their duty, but this only served to
render the foolishness of the whole more striking. The little girls
giggled, the little boys chaffed, the aunts and cousins said it was
beautiful, the uncles inquired if it was all over, and talked about
supper and trains, the “villagers and retainers” dispersed laughing, the
indulgent mother said “never mind,” and explained how well everything had
gone off yesterday; the clever little boy crept upstairs to his room, and
blubbered his heart out in the dark.
Hours later, when the crowd had forgotten him, he stole out again into
the garden. He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and wondered what
could have caused the fiasco. Still puzzled, he drew from his pocket a
box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to the seared end of a
rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago. It smouldered for
an instant, then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred
points of fire. He tried another and another with the same result. He
made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece. Point by point the whole
picture—minus the captain and one mast—came out of the night, and stood
revealed in all the majesty of flame. Its sparks fell upon the piled-up
heap of candles, wheels, and rockets that a little while before had
obstinately refused to burn, and that, one after another, had been thrown
aside as useless. Now with the night frost upon them, they leaped to
light in one grand volcanic eruption. And in front of the gorgeous
spectacle he stood with only one consolation—his mother’s hand in his.
The whole thing was a mystery to him at the time, but, as he learned to
know life better, he came to understand that it was only one example of a
solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human affairs—_your fireworks
won’t go off while the crowd is around_.
Our brilliant repartees do not occur to us till the door is closed upon
us and we are alone in the street, or, as the French would say, are
coming down the stairs. Our after-dinner oratory, that sounded so
telling as we delivered it before the looking-glass, falls strangely flat
amidst the clinking of the glasses. The passionate torrent of words we
meant to pour into her ear becomes a halting rigmarole, at which—small
blame to her—she only laughs.
I would, gentle Reader, you could hear the stories that I meant to tell
you. You judge me, of course, by the stories of mine that you have
read—by this sort of thing, perhaps; but that is not just to me. The
stories I have not told you, that I am going to tell you one day, I would
that you judge me by those.
They are so beautiful; you will say so; over them, you will laugh and cry
with me.
They come into my brain unbidden, they clamour to be written, yet when I
take my pen in hand they are gone. It is as though they were shy of
publicity, as though they would say to me—“You alone, you shall read us,
but you must not write us; we are too real, too true. We are like the
thoughts you cannot speak. Perhaps a little later, when you know more of
life, then you shall tell us.”
Next to these in merit I would place, were I writing a critical essay on
myself, the stories I have begun to write and that remain unfinished, why
I cannot explain to myself. They are good stories, most of them; better
far than the stories I have accomplished. Another time, perhaps, if you
care to listen, I will tell you the beginning of one or two and you shall
judge. Strangely enough, for I have always regarded myself as a
practical, commonsensed man, so many of these still-born children of my
mind I find, on looking through the cupboard where their thin bodies lie,
are ghost stories. I suppose the hope of ghosts is with us all. The
world grows somewhat interesting to us heirs of all the ages. Year by
year, Science with broom and duster tears down the moth-worn tapestry,
forces the doors of the locked chambers, lets light into the secret
stairways, cleans out the dungeons, explores the hidden passages—finding
everywhere only dust. This echoing old castle, the world, so full of
mystery in the days when we were children, is losing somewhat its charm
for us as we grow older. The king sleeps no longer in the hollow of the
hills. We have tunnelled through his mountain chamber. We have shivered
his beard with our pick. We have driven the gods from Olympus. No
wanderer through the moonlit groves now fears or hopes the sweet,
death-giving gleam of Aphrodite’s face. Thor’s hammer echoes not among
the peaks—’tis but the thunder of the excursion train. We have swept the
woods of the fairies. We have filtered the sea of its nymphs. Even the
ghosts are leaving us, chased by the Psychical Research Society.
Perhaps of all, they are the least, however, to be regretted. They were
dull old fellows, clanking their rusty chains and groaning and sighing.
Let them go.
And yet how interesting they might be, if only they would. The old
gentleman in the coat of mail, who lived in King John’s reign, who was
murdered, so they say, on the outskirts of the very wood I can see from
my window as I write—stabbed in the back, poor gentleman, as he was
riding home, his body flung into the moat that to this day is called
Tor’s tomb. Dry enough it is now, and the primroses love its steep
banks; but a gloomy enough place in those days, no doubt, with its twenty
feet of stagnant water. Why does he haunt the forest paths at night, as
they tell me he does, frightening the children out of their wits,
blanching the faces and stilling the laughter of the peasant lads and
lasses, slouching home from the village dance? Instead, why does he not
come up here and talk to me? He should have my easy-chair and welcome,
would he only be cheerful and companionable.
What brave tales could he not tell me. He fought in the first Crusade,
heard the clarion voice of Peter, met the great Godfrey face to face,
stood, hand on sword-hilt, at Runny-mede, perhaps. Better than a whole
library of historical novels would an evening’s chat be with such a
ghost. What has he done with his eight hundred years of death? where has
he been? what has he seen? Maybe he has visited Mars; has spoken to the
strange spirits who can live in the liquid fires of Jupiter. What has he
learned of the great secret? Has he found the truth? or is he, even as
I, a wanderer still seeking the unknown?
You, poor, pale, grey nun—they tell me that of midnights one may see your
white face peering from the ruined belfry window, hear the clash of sword
and shield among the cedar-trees beneath.
It was very sad, I quite understand, my dear lady. Your lovers both were
killed, and you retired to a convent. Believe me, I am sincerely sorry
for you, but why waste every night renewing the whole painful experience?
Would it not be better forgotten? Good Heavens, madam, suppose we living
folk were to spend our lives wailing and wringing our hands because of
the wrongs done to us when we were children? It is all over now. Had he
lived, and had you married him, you might not have been happy. I do not
wish to say anything unkind, but marriages founded upon the sincerest
mutual love have sometimes turned out unfortunately, as you must surely
know.
Do take my advice. Talk the matter over with the young men themselves.
Persuade them to shake hands and be friends. Come in, all of you, out of
the cold, and let us have some reasonable talk.
Why seek you to trouble us, you poor pale ghosts? Are we not your
children? Be our wise friends. Tell me, how loved the young men in your
young days? how answered the maidens? Has the world changed much, do you
think? Had you not new women even then? girls who hated the everlasting
tapestry frame and spinning-wheel? Your father’s servants, were they so
much worse off than the freemen who live in our East-end slums and sew
slippers for fourteen hours a day at a wage of nine shillings a week? Do
you think Society much improved during the last thousand years? Is it
worse? is it better? or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that we
call things by other names? Tell me, what have _you_ learned?
Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.
One has had a tiring day’s shooting. One is looking forward to one’s
bed. As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes from behind
the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what is in store for
one: a two or three hours’ talk with rowdy old Sir Lanval—he of the
lance. We know all his tales by heart, and he will shout them. Suppose
our aunt, from whom we have expectations, and who sleeps in the next
room, should wake and overhear! They were fit and proper enough stories,
no doubt, for the Round Table, but we feel sure our aunt would not
appreciate them:—that story about Sir Agravain and the cooper’s wife! and
he always will tell that story.