important during the reigns of the Hanoverian Kings up to the time of
Queen Victoria the Good. They owned large areas of England as
private property; they could do what they liked with it. In the days
of Victoria the Good and her immediate predecessors these landlords
who had ruled the Empire through the House of Lords made a losing
fight for predominance against the new industrialists, men who
employed great masses of people for their private gain in the iron
and steel industries, cotton and wool, beer and shipping, and these
again gave way to a rather different type who developed advertisement
and a political and financial use of newspapers and new methods of
finance. The old land-holding families had to adapt themselves to
the new powers or be pushed aside. Lord Bramble was one of those
pushed aside, an indignant, old-fashioned, impoverished landowner.
He was in a slough of debts. His estates covered many square miles;
he owned farms and woodlands, a great white uncomfortable house, far
too roomy for his shrunken means, and two square miles of park. The
park was greatly neglected, it was covered with groups of old trees
infested and rotten with fungus; rabbits and moles abounded, and
thistles and nettles. There were no young trees there at all. The
fences and gates were badly patched; and here and there ran
degenerating roads. But boards threatening trespassers abounded, and
notices saying 'NO THOROUGHFARE.' For it was the dearest privilege
of the British landlord to restrict the free movements of ordinary
people, and Lord Bramble guarded his wilderness with devotion. Great
areas of good land in England in those days were in a similar state
of picturesquely secluded dilapidation."
"Those were the lands where they did the shooting," said Radiant.
"How did you know?"
"I have seen a picture. They stood in a line along the edge of a
copse, with brown-leaved trees and a faint smell of decay and a touch
of autumnal dampness in the air, and they shot lead pellets at birds."
"They did. And the beaters--I was pressed into that service once or
twice--drove the birds, the pheasants, towards them. Shooting
parties used to come to Chessing Hanger, and the shooting used to go
on day after day. It was done with tremendous solemnity."
"But why?" asked Willow.
"Yes," said Radiant. "Why did men do it?"
"I don't know," said Sarnac. "All I know is that at certain seasons
of the year the great majority of the gentlemen of England who were
supposed to be the leaders and intelligence of the land, who were
understood to guide its destinies and control its future, went out
into the woods or on the moors to massacre birds of various sorts
with guns, birds bred specially at great expense for the purpose of
this slaughter. These noble sportsmen were marshalled by
gamekeepers; they stood in rows, the landscape was animated with the
popping of their guns. The highest in the land participated gravely
in this national function and popped with distinction. The men of
this class were in truth at just that level above imbecility where
the banging of a gun and the thrill of seeing a bird swirl and drop
is inexhaustibly amusing. They never tired of it. The bang of the
gun seems to have been essential to the sublimity of the sensations
of these sportsmen. It wasn't mere killing, because in that case
these people could also have assisted in killing the sheep and oxen
and pigs required by the butchers, but this sport they left to men of
an inferior social class. Shooting birds on the wing was the
essential idea. When Lord Bramble was not killing pheasants or
grouse he shot in the south of France at perplexed pigeons with
clipped wings just let out of traps. Or he hunted--not real animal
hunting, not a fair fight with bear or tiger or elephant in a jungle,
but the chasing of foxes--small stinking red animals about the size
of water-spaniels, which were sedulously kept from extinction for
this purpose of hunting; they were hunted across cultivated land, and
the hunters rode behind a pack of dogs. Lord Bramble dressed himself
up with extreme care in a red jacket and breeches of pigskin to do
this. For the rest of his time the good man played a card game
called bridge, so limited and mechanical that anyone nowadays would
be able to read out the results and exact probabilities of every deal
directly he saw his cards. There were four sets of thirteen cards
each. But Lord Bramble, who had never learnt properly to count up to
thirteen, found it full of dramatic surprises and wonderful
sensations. A large part of his time was spent in going from
race-course to race-course; they raced a specially flimsy breed of
horses in those days. There again he dressed with care. In the
illustrated papers in the public library I would see photographs of
Lord Bramble, with a silk hat--a top hat, you know--cocked very much
on one side 'in the Paddock' or 'snapped with a lady friend.' There
was much betting and knowingness about this horse-racing. His
Lordship dined with comparative intelligence, erring only a little on
the excessive side with the port. People still smoked in those days,
and Lord Bramble would consume three or four cigars a day. Pipes he
thought plebeian and cigarettes effeminate. He could read a
newspaper but not a book, being incapable of sustained attention;
after dinner in town he commonly went to a theatre or music-hall
where women could be seen, more or less undraped. The clothing of
that time filled such people as Lord Bramble with a coy covetousness
for nakedness. The normal beauty of the human body was a secret and
a mystery, and half the art and decoration of Chessing Hanger House
played stimulatingly with the forbidden vision.
"In that past existence of mine I took the way of life of Lord
Bramble as a matter of course, but now that I recall it I begin to
see the enormous absurdity of these assassins of frightened birds,
these supporters of horses and ostlers, these peepers at feminine
thighs and shoulder-blades. Their women sympathised with their
gunmanship, called their horses 'the dears,' cultivated dwarfed and
crippled breeds of pet dogs, and yielded the peeps expected of them.
"Such was the life of the aristocratic sort of people in those days.
They set the tone of what was considered a hard, bright, healthy
life. The rest of the community admired them greatly and imitated
them to the best of its ability. The tenant farmer, if he could not
shoot pheasants, shot rabbits, and if he could not bet twenty-pound
notes at the fashionable race-meeting at Goodwood, put his half-crown
upon his fancy at the Cliffstone races on Byford Downs--with his hat
cocked over one eye as much like Lord Bramble and King Edward as
possible.
"Great multitudes of people there were whose lives were shaped
completely by the habits and traditions of these leaders. There was
my Uncle John Julip for example. His father had been a gardener and
his grandfather before him, and almost all his feminine ancestry and
his aunts and cousins were, as the phrase went, 'in service.' None
of the people round and about the downstairs of Chessing Hanger had
natural manners; all were dealing in some more or less plausible
imitation of some real lady or gentleman. My Uncle John Julip found
his ideal in a certain notorious Sir John ffrench-Cuthbertson. He
sought similar hats and adopted similar attitudes.
"He bet heavily in imitation of his model, but he bet less
fortunately. This my aunt resented, but she found great comfort in
the way in which his clothing and gestures under-studied Sir John.
"'If only he'd been _born_ a gentleman,' said my aunt, 'everything
'ud a-been all right. 'E's a natural sportsman; 'e eats 'is 'eart
out in the gardens.'
"He certainly did not work his heart out. I do not remember ever
seeing him dig or carry or wheel a barrow. My memory of him in the
garden is of one who stood, one hand gripping a hoe as if it were a
riding whip under the tail of his coat, and the other gesticulating
or pointing out what had to be done.
"To my father and myself he was always consciously aristocratic,
bearing himself in the grand manner. This he did, although my father
was a third as tall again as he was and far more abundantly
intelligent. He always called my father 'Smith.'
"'What are you going to do with that boy, Smith?' he would ask.
'Seems to me, wants feedin' up and open air.'
"My father, who secretly shared the general view that my Uncle John
under happier stars would have made a very fine gentleman, always
tried, as he expressed it, 'to keep his end up' by calling my uncle
'John.' He would answer, 'Carn't say as I've rightly settled that,
John. 'E's a regular book-worm nowadays, say what you like to him.'
"'Books!' said my Uncle John Julip with a concentrated scorn of books
that was essentially English. 'You can't get anything out of books
that 'asn't been put into them. It stands to reason. There's
nothing in books that didn't first come out of the sile. Books is
flattened flowers at the best, as 'is Lordship said at dinner only
the other night.'
"My father was much struck by the idea. 'That's what I tell 'im,' he
said--inexactly.
"'Besides, who's going to put anything into a book that's worth
knowing?' said my uncle. 'It's like expecting these here tipsters in
the papers to give away something worth keeping to theirselves. Not
it!'
"''Arf the time,' my father agreed, 'I expect they're telling you
lies in these books of yours and larfing at you. All the same,' he
reflected with an abrupt lapse from speculation to reverence,
'there's One Book, John.'
"He had remembered the Bible.
"'I wasn't speaking of that, Smith,' said my uncle sharply.
'Sufficient unto the day---- I mean, that's Sunday Stuff.'
"I hated my days of trial in the gardens. Once or twice during that
unpleasant month I was sent with messages up to the kitchen and once
to the pantry of the great house. There I said something unfortunate
for my uncle, something that was to wipe out all possibility of a
gardener's career for me.
"The butler, Mr. Petterton, was also a secondary aristocrat, but in a
larger and quite different manner from that of my uncle. He towered
up and looked down the slopes of himself, his many chins were pink
and stabbed by his collar, and his hair was yellow and very shiny. I
had to deliver into his hands a basket of cucumbers and a bunch of
blue flowers called borage used in the mixing of summer drinks. He
was standing at a table talking respectfully to a foxy little man in
tweeds who was eating bread-and-cheese and drinking beer; this I was
to learn later was Lord Bramble's agent. There was also a young
footman in this room, a subterranean room it was with heavily barred
windows, and he was cleaning silver plate with exemplary industry.
"'So you brought this from the gardens,' said Mr. Petterton with fine
irony. 'And may I ask why Mr.--why Sir John did not condescend to
bring them himself?'
"''E tole me to bring them,' I said.
"'And pray who may you be?'
"'I'm 'Arry Smith,' I said. 'Mr. Julip, 'e's my uncle.'
"'Ah!' said Mr. Petterton and was struck by a thought. 'That's the
son of Smith who's a sort of greengrosher in Cliffstone.'
"'Cherry Gardens, sir, we live at.'
"'Haven't seen you over here before, my boy. Have you ever visited
us before?'
"'Not 'ere, sir.'
"'Not here! But you come over to the gardens perhaps?'
"'Nearly every Sunday, sir.'
"'Exactly. And usually I suppose, Master Smith, there's something to
carry back?'
"'Almost always, sir.'
"'Something a bit heavy?'
"'Not too heavy,' I said bravely.
"'You see, sir?' said Mr. Petterton to the foxy little man in tweeds.
"I began to realise that something unpleasant was in the wind when
this latter person set himself to cross-examine me in a rapid,
snapping manner. What was it I carried? I became very red about the
face and ears and declared I did not know. Did I ever carry grapes?
I didn't know. Pears? I didn't know. Celery? I didn't know.
"'Well, _I_ know,' said the agent. '_I_ know. So why should I ask
you further? Get out of here.'
"I went back to my uncle and said nothing to him of this very
disagreeable conversation, but I knew quite well even then that I had
not heard the last of this matter."
CHAPTER THE THIRD
MISFORTUNES COME UPON THE SMITH FAMILY
§ 1
"And now," said Sarnac, "I have to tell of a tornado of mischances
that broke up our precarious little home at Cherry Gardens
altogether. In that casual, planless, over-populated world there
were no such things as security or social justice as we should
understand these words nowadays. It is hard for us to imagine its
universal ramshackle insecurity. Think of it. The whole world
floated economically upon a cash and credit system that was
fundamentally fictitious and conventional, there were no adequate
protections against greedy abuses of those monetary conventions, no
watch kept over world-production and world-consumption, no knowledge
of the variations of climate year by year, and the fortunes not only
of individuals but of states and nations fluctuated irrationally and
uncontrollably. It was a world in which life was still almost as
unsafe for men and women as life remains to-day for a field-mouse or
a midge, which is never safe from one moment to another in a world of
cats and owls and swallows and the like. People were born haphazard,
gladdened, distressed, glorified or killed haphazard, and no one was
ready for either their births or their deaths. Sudden death there is
still in the world, a bright adventure--that lightning yesterday
might have killed all or any of us, but such death is a rare thing
and a clean thing. There is none of the distressful bearing-down to
death through want, anxiety, and illness ill-tended and
misunderstood, that was the common experience in the past. And one
death does not devastate a dozen or more lives as deaths often did in
the old days. A widow in the old days had lost not only her lover
but her 'living.' Yet life is full of subtle compensations. We did
not feel our endless dangers in those days. We had a wonderful power
of disregard until the chances struck us.
"All children," said Sarnac, "start with an absolute confidence in
the permanence of the things they find about them. Disillusionment
about safety postulates clear-headedness. You could not realise your
dangers unless you were clear-headed, and if you were clear-headed
you had the fortitude to face your dangers. That old world was
essentially a world of muddle-headed sophisticated children, blind to
the universal catastrophe of the top-heavy and collapsing
civilisation in which they played their parts. They thought that
life was generally safe in a world of general insecurity. Misfortune
astonished everyone in those days, though I cannot understand why
they should have been astonished at any misfortune.
"The first blow fell without notice about six weeks after I had come
back from Chessing Hanger to my last half year of schooling before I
became a gardener. It was late afternoon and I was home from school.
I was downstairs reading a book and my mother was clearing away tea
and grumbling at Fanny who wanted to go out. The lamp was lit, and
both I and my father who was having what he called 'a bit of a read
at the noosepaper' were as close up to its insufficient light as we
could get. We heard the shop bell jangle overhead.
"'Drat it!' said my father. 'Whaddey want this time o' day?'
"He removed his spectacles. He had bought a pair haphazard at a
pawnbroker's shop and always used them when he read. They magnified
his large mild eyes very greatly. He regarded us protestingly. What
_did_ they want? We heard the voice of Uncle John Julip calling down
the staircase.
"'Mort'mer,' he said in a voice that struck me as unusual. I had
never heard him call my father anything but Smith before.
"'That you, John?' said my father standing up.
"'It's me. I want to speak to you.'
"'Come down and 'ave some tea, John,' cried my father at the bottom
of the stairs.
"'Somethin' to tell you. You better come up here. Somethin'
serious.'
"I speculated if it could be any misdeed of mine he had come over
about. But my conscience was fairly clear.
"'Now whatever can it be?' asked my father.
"'You better go up and arst 'im,' my mother suggested.
"My father went.
"I heard my uncle say something about, 'We're busted. We've bin give
away and we're busted,' and then the door into the shop closed. We
all listened to the movements above. It sounded as though Uncle
Julip was walking up and down as he talked. My sister Fanny in her
hat and jacket flitted unobtrusively up the stairs and out. After a
time Prue came in; she had been helping teacher tidy up, she said,
though I knew better. Then after a long interval my father came
downstairs alone.
"He went to the hearthrug like one in a trance and stood, staring
portentously in order to make my mother ask what was the matter.
'Why hasn't John come down for a bit of tea or something? Where's he
gone, Morty?'
"''E's gorn for a van,' said my father; 'that's where 'e's gone. For
a van.'
"'Whatever for?' asked my mother.
"'For a removal,' said my father. 'That's what for.'
"'Removal?'
"'We got to put 'em up 'ere for a night or so.'
"'Put'em up! Who?'
"''Im and Adelaide. He's coming to Cherry Gardens.'
"'You done mean, Morty, 'e's lost 'is situation?'
"'I do. S'Lordship turned against 'im. Mischief 'as been made.
Spying. And they managed to get 'im out of it. Turned out 'e is.
Tole to go.'
"'But surely they give 'im notice!'
"'Not a bit of it. S'Lordship came down to the gardens 'ot and
strong. "'Ere," 'e said, "get out of it!" Like that 'e said it.
"You thank your lucky stars," 'e said, "I ain't put the 'tecs on to
you and your snivellin' brother-in-law." Yes. S'Lordship said that.'
"'But what did 'e mean by it, Morty?'
"'Mean? 'E meant that certain persons who shall be nameless 'ad put
a suspicion on John, told lies about 'im and watched 'im. Watched
'im they did and me. They've drawed me into it, Martha. They've
drawed in young 'Arry. They've made up a tale about us.... I always
said we was a bit too regular.... There it is, 'e ain't a 'ead
gardener any more. 'E ain't going to 'ave references give 'im; 'e
ain't ever going to 'ave another regular job. 'E's been betrayed and
ruined, and there we are!'
"'But they say 'e took sompthing?--my brother John took sompthing?'
"'Surplus projuce. What's been a perquisite of every gardener since
the world began....'
"I sat with burning ears and cheeks pretending not to hear this
dreadful conversation. No one knew of my own fatal share in my
uncle's downfall. But already in my heart, like the singing of a
lark after a thunderstorm, was arising a realisation that now I might
never become a gardener. My mother expressed her consternation
brokenly. She asked incredulous questions which my father dealt with
in an oracular manner. Then suddenly my mother pounced savagely on
my sister Prue, reproaching her for listening to what didn't concern
her instead of washing up."
"This is a very circumstantial scene," said Radiant.
"It was the first great crisis of my dream life," said Sarnac. "It
is very vivid in my memory. I can see again that old kitchen in
which we lived and the faded table-cloth and the paraffin lamp with
its glass container. I think if you gave me time I could tell you
everything there was in that room."
"What's a hearthrug?" asked Firefly suddenly. "What sort of thing
was your hearthrug?"
"Like nothing on earth to-day. A hearthrug was a sort of rug you put
in front of a coal fire, next to the fender, which prevented the
ashes creeping into the room. This one my father had made out of old
clothes, trousers and such-like things, bits of flannel and bits of
coarse sacking, cut into strips and sewn together. He had made it in
the winter evenings as he sat by the fireside, sewing industriously."
"Had it any sort of pattern?"
"None. But I shall never tell my story, if you ask questions. I
remember that my uncle, when he had made his arrangements about the
van, came in for a bread-and-cheese supper before he walked back to
Chessing Hanger. He was very white and distressed looking, Sir John
had all faded away from him; he was like a man who had been dragged
out from some hiding-place, he was a very distressed and pitiful man
exposed to the light. I remember my mother asked him, ''Ow's
Adelaide taking it?'
"My uncle assumed an expression of profound resignation. 'Starts a
new pain,' he said bitterly. 'At a time like this.'
"My father and mother exchanged sympathetic glances.
"'I tell you----' said my uncle, but did not say what he told us.
"A storm of weak rage wrung him. 'If I knew who'd done all this,' he
said. 'That--that cat of a 'ousekeeper--cat I call her--she's got
someone what wanted my place. If she and Petterton framed it up----'
"He struck the table, but half-heartedly.
"My father poured him out some beer.
"'Ugh!' said my uncle and emptied the glass.
"'Got to face it,' said my uncle, feeling better. 'Got to go through
with it. I suppose with all these tuppenny-apenny villa gardens 'ere
there's jobbing work to be got. I'll get something all right....
Think of it! Jobbing gardener! Me--a Jobber! By the Day! It'll
set up some of these 'ere season-ticket clerks no end to 'ave Lord
Bramble's gardener dragging a lawn-mower for them. I can see 'em
showing me to their friends out of the window. Bin 'ead-gardener to
a Lord, they'll say. Well, well----!
"'It's a come-down,' said my father when my uncle had departed. 'Say
what you like, it's a come-down.'
"My mother was preoccupied with the question of their accommodation.
'She'll 'ave to 'ave the sofa in the sitting-room I expect, and 'e'll
'ave a bit of a shake-up on the floor. Don't suppose she'll like it.
They'll 'ave their own bedding of course. But Adelaide isn't the
sort to be comfortable on a sofa.'
"Poor woman! she was not. Although my uncle and my father and mother
all pointed out to her the untimeliness and inconsiderateness of her
conduct she insisted upon suffering so much that a doctor had to be
called in. He ordered a prompt removal to a hospital for an
immediate operation.
"Those were days," said Sarnac, "of the profoundest ignorance about
the body. The ancient Greeks and the Arabs had done a little anatomy
during their brief phases of intellectual activity, but the rest of
the world had only been studying physiology in a scientific way for
about three hundred years. People in general still knew practically
nothing of vital processes. As I have told you they even bore
children by accident. And living the queer lives they did, with
abnormal and ill-prepared food in a world of unchecked infections,
they found the very tissues of the bodies going wrong and breaking
out into the queerest growths. Parts of these bodies would cease to
do anything but change into a sort of fungoid proliferation----"
"Their bodies were like their communities!" said Radiant.
"The same sort of thing. They had tumours and cancers and such-like
things in their bodies and Cherry-Garden urban-districts on their
countrysides. But these growths!--they are dreadful even to recall."
"But surely," said Willow, "in the face of such a horrible
possibility which might afflict anyone, all the world must have
wanted to push on with physiological research."
"Didn't they see," said Sunray, "that all these things were
controllable and curable?"
"Not a bit of it," said Sarnac. "They didn't positively like these
tumours and cancers, but the community was too under-vitalised to put
up a real fight against these miseries. And everyone thought that he
or she would escape--until it had them. There was a general apathy.
And the priests and journalists and so forth, the common opinion
makers, were jealous of scientific men. They did their best to
persuade people that there was nothing hopeful in scientific
research, they did all they could to discredit its discoveries, to
ridicule its patient workers and set people against them."
"That's what puzzles me most," said Sunray.
"Their mental habits were different. Their minds hadn't been trained
to comprehensive thinking. Their thinking was all in compartments
and patches. The morbid growths in their bodies were nothing to the
morbid growths in their minds."
§ 2
"My aunt in the hospital, with that lack of consideration for my
uncle that had always distinguished her, would neither recover nor
die. She was a considerable expense to him and no help; she added
greatly to his distresses. After some days and at the urgent
suggestion of my mother he removed himself from our sitting-room to a
two-roomed lodging in the house of a bricklayer in an adjacent
street; into this he crowded his furniture from Chessing Hanger, but
he frequented my father's shop and showed a deepening attachment to
my father's company.