It was late, and the day was already falling when I came, sitting my
horse Monster, to a rise of land. We were at a walk, for we had gone
very far since early morning, and were now off the turf upon the hard
road; moreover, the hill, though gentle, had been prolonged. From its
summit I saw before me, as I had seen it a hundred times, the whole of
the weald.
But now that landscape was transfigured, because many influences had met
to make it, for the moment, an enchanted land. The autumn, coming late,
had crowded it with colours; a slight mist drew out the distances, and
along the horizon stood out, quite even and grey like mountains, the
solemn presence of the Downs. Over all this the sky was full of storm.
In some manner which language cannot express, and hardly music, the
vision was unearthly. All the lesser heights of the plain ministered to
one effect, a picture which was to other pictures what the marvellous is
to the experience of common things. The distant mills, the edges of
heath and the pine trees, were as though they had not before been caught
by the eyes of travellers, and would not, after the brief space of their
apparition, be seen again. Here was a countryside whose every outline
was familiar; and yet it was pervaded by a general quality of the
uplifted and the strange. And for that one hour under the sunset the
county did not seem to me a thing well known, but rather adored.
The glow of evening, which had seemed to put this horizon into another
place and time than ours, warned me of darkness; and I made off the road
to the right for an inn I knew of, that stands close to the upper Arun
and is very good. Here an old man and his wife live easily, and have so
lived for at least thirty years, proving how accessible is content.
Their children are in service beyond the boundaries of the county, and
are thus provided with sufficiency; and they themselves, the old people,
enjoy a small possession which at least does not diminish, for, thank
God, their land is free. It is a square of pasture bordered by great
elms upon three sides of it, but on the fourth, towards the water, a
line of pollard willows; and off a little way before the house runs
Arun, sliding as smooth as Mincius, and still so young that he can
remember the lake in the forest where he rose.
On such ancestral land these two people await without anxiety what they
believe will be a kindly death. Nor is their piety of that violent and
tortured kind which is associated with fear and with distress of earlier
life; but they remain peasants, drawing from the earth they have always
known as much sustenance for the soul as even their religion can afford
them, and mixing that religion so intimately with their experience of
the soil that, were they not isolated in an evil time, they would have
set up some shrine about the place to sanctify it.
The passion and the strain which must accompany (even in the happiest
and most secluded) the working years of life, have so far disappeared
from them, that now they can no longer recall any circumstances other
than those which they enjoy; so that their presence in a room about one,
as they set rood before one or meet one at the door, is in itself an
influence of peace.
In such a place, and with such hosts to serve him, be wears of the world
retire for a little time, from an evening to a morning; and a man can
enjoy a great refreshment. In such a place he will eat strongly and
drink largely, and sleep well and deeply, and, when he saddles again for
his journey, he will take the whole world new; nor are those intervals
without their future value, for the memory of a complete repose is a
sort of sacrament, and a viaticum for the weary lengths of the way.
The stable of this place is made of oak entirely, and, after more than
a hundred years, the woodwork is still sound, save that the roof now
falls in waves where the great beams have sagged a little under the
pressure of the tiles. And these tiles are of that old hand-made kind
which, whenever you find them, you will do well to buy; for they have a
slight downward curve to them, and so they fit closer and shed the rain
better than if they were flat. Also they do not slip, and thus they put
less strain upon the timber. This excellent stable has no flooring but a
packed layer of chalk laid on the ground; and the wooden manger is all
polished and shining, where it has been rubbed by the noses of ten
thousand horses since the great war. That polishing was helped, perhaps,
by the nose of Percy's horse, and perhaps by the nose of some wheeler
who in his time had dragged the guns back aboard, retreating through the
night after Corunna. It is in every way a stable that a small peasant
should put up for himself, without seeking money from other men. It is,
therefore, a stable which your gaping scientists would condemn; and
though as yet they have not got their ugly hands upon the dwellings of
beasts as they have upon those of men, yet I often fear for this stable,
and am always glad when I come back and find it there. For the men who
make our laws are the same as those that sell us our bricks and our land
and our metals; and they make the laws so that rebuilding shall go on:
and vile rebuilding too.
Anyhow, this stable yet stands; and in none does the horse, Monster,
take a greater delight, for he also is open to the influence of
holiness. So I led him in, and tied him by the ancient headstall, and I
rubbed him down, and I washed his feet and covered him with the rough
rug that lay there. And when I had done all that, I got him oats from
the neighbouring bin; for the place knew me well, and I could always
tend to my own beast when I came there. And as he ate his oats, I said
to him: "Monster, my horse, is there any place on earth where a man,
even for a little time, can be as happy as the brutes? If there is, it
is here at the Sign of The Lion." And Monster answered: "There is a
tradition among us that, of all creatures that creep upon the earth, man
is the fullest of sorrow."
I left him then, and went towards the house. It was quite dark, and the
windows, with their square, large panes and true proportions, shone out
and made it home. The room within received me like a friend. The open
chimney at its end, round which the house is built, was filled with
beech logs burning; and the candles, which were set in brass, mixed
their yellow light with that of the fire. The long ceiling was low, as
are the ceilings of Heaven. And oak was here everywhere also: in the
beams and the shelves and the mighty table. For oak was, and will be
again, the chief wood of the weald.
When they put food and ale before me, it was of the kind which has been
English ever since England began, and which perhaps good fortune will
preserve over the breakdown of our generation, until we have England
back again. One could see the hops in the tankard, and one could taste
the barley, until, more and more sunk into the plenitude of this good
house, one could dare to contemplate, as though from a distant
standpoint, the corruption and the imminent danger of the time through
which we must lead our lives. And, as I so considered the ruin of the
great cities and their slime, I felt as though I were in a fortress of
virtue and of health, which could hold out through the pressure of the
war. And I thought to myself: "Perhaps even before our children are men,
these parts which survive from a better order will be accepted as
models, and England will be built again."
This fantasy had not time, tenuous as it was, to disappear, before there
came into that room a man whose gesture and bearing promised him to be
an excellent companion, but in whose eyes I also perceived some light
not ordinary. He was of middle age, fifty or more; his hair was crisp
and grey, his face brown, as though he had been much upon the sea. He
was tall in stature, and of some strength. He saluted me, and, when he
had eaten, asked me if I also were familiar with this inn.
"Very familiar," I said; "and since I can enter it at any hour freely,
it is now more familiar to me even than the houses that were once my
homes. For nowadays we, who work in the State and are not idle, must be
driven from one place to another; and only the very rich have certitude
and continuity. But to them it is of no service; for they are too idle
to take root in the soil."
"Yet I was of their blood," he said; "and there is in this county a home
which should be mine. But nothing to-day is capable of endurance. I have
not seen my home (though it is but ten miles from here) since I left it
in my thirtieth year; and I too would rather come to this inn, which I
know as you know it, than to any house in England; because I am certain
of entry, and because I know what I shall find, and because what I find
is what any man of this county should find, if the soul of it is not to
disappear."
"You, then," I answered (we were now seated side by side before the fire
with but one flickering candle behind us, and on the floor between us a
port just younger than the host), "you, then, come here for much the
same reason as do I?"
"And what is that?" said he.
"Why," said I, "to enjoy the illusion that Change can somewhere be
arrested, and that, in some shape, a part at least of the things we love
remains. For, since I was a boy and almost since I can remember,
everything in this house has been the same; and here I escape from the
threats of the society we know."
When I had said this, he was grave and silent for a little while; and
then he answered:
"It is impossible, I think, after many years to recover any such
illusion. Just as a young man can no longer think himself (as children
do) the actor in any drama of his own choosing, so a man growing old (as
am I) can no longer expect of any society--and least of all of his
own--the gladness that comes from an illusion of permanence."
"For my part," I answered in turn, "I know very well, though I can
conjure up this feeling of security, that it is very flimsy stuff; and
I take it rather as men take symbols. For though these good people will
at last perish, and some brewer--a Colonel of Volunteers as like as
not--will buy this little field, and though for the port we are drinking
there will be imperial port, and for the beer we have just drunk
something as noisome as that port, and though thistles will grow up in
the good pasture ground, and though, in a word, this inn will become a
hotel and will perish, nevertheless I cannot but believe that England
remains, and I do not think it the taking of a drug or a deliberate
cheating of oneself to come and steep one's soul in what has already
endured so long because it was proper to our country."
"All that you say," he answered, "is but part of the attempt to escape
Necessity. Your very frame is of that substance for which permanence
means death; and every one of all the emotions that you know is of its
nature momentary, and must be so if it is to be alive."
"Yet there is a divine thirst," I said, "for something that will not so
perish. If there were no such thirst, why should you and I debate such
things, or come here to The Lion either of us, to taste antiquity? And
if that thirst is there, it is a proof that there is for us some End and
some such satisfaction. For my part, as I know of nothing else, I cannot
but seek it in this visible good world. I seek it in Sussex, in the
nature of my home, and in the tradition of my blood."
But he answered: "No; it is not thus to be attained, the end of which
you speak. And that thirst, which surely is divine, is to be quenched in
no stream that we can find by journeying, not even in the little rivers
that run here under the combes of home."