Now this is where the tragic conflict comes in, between the _The Patchwork Papers

Transcriber’s Notes:

The original spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained,

with the exception of apparent typographical errors which have been

corrected.

Text in Italics is indicated between _underscores_.

Text in small capitals has been replaced by regular uppercase text.

In the original, the Table of Contents does not contain the entries to

Chapters XI, XII, and XIII. However, in the electronic version, they

have been added.

* * * * *

THE PATCHWORK PAPERS

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

THE APPLE OF EDEN

MIRAGE

THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE

THE

PATCHWORK PAPERS

E. TEMPLE THURSTON

[Illustration: D·M·&·Co]

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1910

_Some eight of these papers appear in print for the first time. For

those which have been published before, my thanks are due to the

Editors of “The Onlooker” and “The Ladies’ Field” for permission to

reprint._

_THE AUTHOR._

E. TEMPLE THURSTON

_Published February 1911_

_To_

NORMAN FORBES ROBERTSON

MY DEAR NORMAN,

Here are my Patchwork Papers for you to unpick at your leisure. I have

not presumed to call them essays, since it is nowadays unseemly for a

novelist to attempt anything worthy of the name of letters—moreover,

would any one read them? By the same token, I have not dared to

call them short stories, and that, mainly because the so-called

essential love interest is conspicuous by its absence. Really they are

illustrated essays. What better name then than papers can be given them?

It may, for example, be pardonable in a paper to split an infinitive

for the sake of euphony, as I have done in “From my Portfolio,”—but to

split an infinitive in an essay! It were better to rob a church, or

speak out one’s mind about the monarchy. All such things as these are

treasonable. To call them papers then will save me much from my friends.

When they appeared serially, it was under the title “Beauties which are

Inevitable.” I altered that when I thought of you trying to remember

what the book was called, as you recommended it with a twinkle in

your eye to your friends. But that title still stands justified in my

mind, since these papers express the things which latterly have become

realities to me. For wheresoever you may go in this world—whether it be

striving to the highest heights, or descending, as some would have it,

to the deepest depths—life is just as ugly or just as beautiful as you

are inclined to find it.

In all my early work, until, in fact, I wrote “Sally Bishop,” I was

inclined to find it ugly enough in all conscience. But now beauty does

seem inevitable and, what is more, the only reality we have. For if,

as they say, God made man in His own image, then to call the ugliness

of man a reality is to curse the sight of God; in which case, it were

as well to die and have done with this business of existence altogether.

To see nothing but ugliness then, or, as the modern school would have

it, to see nothing but realism, is a form of mental suicide which,

thank God, no longer appeals to me. For when every year I find the

daffodils bringing up their glory of colour and beauty of line with

unfailing perfection, I cannot but think that man, made in God’s image,

was meant to be still more beautiful in his thoughts and deeds even

than they. Then surely what man was meant to be must be the only true

reality of what he is. All else happens to him. That is all.

Wherefore, when, in these pages, you read of Bellwattle and of Emily

the housemaid, of my little old pensioner, or of the poor woman in

Limehouse; when, too, you read my attempt to give words to the maternal

instinct; then you will see realities as I have seen them over the past

two years and I dedicate this true record of them to you, because I

know that you will take them to be as real as the beauty of Livy, the

manliness of Nod, or the colour of those wall-flowers which bloom by

the little red-brick paths in that graceful garden of yours in Kent.

Yours always,

E. TEMPLE THURSTON.

Eversley, 1910.

CONTENTS

I. THE PENSION OF THE PATCHWORK QUILT 3

II. THE MOUSE-TRAP, HENRIETTA STREET 13

III. THE WONDERFUL CITY 25

IV. BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF GOD 33

V. REALISM 43

VI. THE SABBATH 55

VII. HOUSE TO LET 67

VIII. A SUFFRAGETTE 77

IX. BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE 87

X. MAY EVE 101

XI. THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 111

XII. THE FEMININE APPRECIATION OF MATHEMATICS 123

XIII. THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 135

XIV. FROM MY PORTFOLIO 147

XV. AN OLD STRING BONNET 159

XVI. THE NEW MALADY 167

XVII. BELLWATTLE AND THE DIGNITY OF MEN 179

XVIII. THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED 193

XIX. ART 203

XX. THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 217

XXI. THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 229

XXII. BELLWATTLE ON THE HIGHER MATHEMATICS 243

XXIII. THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 257

XXIV. SHIP’S LOGS 269

THE PENSION OF THE PATCHWORK QUILT

So much more than you would ever dream lies hidden behind the beauty

of “The Blue Bird,” by Maurice Maeterlinck. Beauty may be the first of

its qualities. By the same token, beauty may be the last. But in the

midst, in the heart of it, there is set a deep well of truth—fathomless

almost—one of those natural wells which God, with His omnipotent

disregard of limitations, has sunk into the heart of the world.

That utter annihilation of death must be confusion to many when

expressed in terms of St. Joseph lilies. Ninety per cent. of people

will be likely to say, “How pretty!” That is the worst of it. They

ought to be feeling, “How true!”

Yet what is a man to do? He can only express the immortality that he

knows in terms of the material things he sees. St. Joseph lilies are

as good as, if not better than anything else. But they might as well

have been artichokes, which come up every year. Artichokes would have

done just as well, only that people who object to artichokes would have

said, “How silly!”

No one can object to St. Joseph lilies. Yet, whatever they are, you

will never be able to persuade the world to see the immortal truth

behind the mortal and material fact.

It was the chance of circumstance which gave me an example of that

amazing truth that old people, when they have passed away, are given

life whenever the young people think of them. To the hundreds and

thousands who have been to see “The Blue Bird” there are hundreds and

thousands to say, “How charming that idea is—the old people coming to

life again whenever any one thinks of them!”

“And how amazingly true,” said I to one who had made the remark to me.

The lady looked at me as at one who has made a needless jest and then

she laughed. Being a lady, she was polite.

But I hated that politeness. I hated the laugh which expressed it. If

chance should make her eye to fall upon this page, she will see how

I hated it. She will see also how earnestly I had meant what I said.

For I have found a proof of the truth. I know now that the old people

live. What is more, they know it too. When it comes that they pass that

Rubicon which takes them into the shadow of those portals beneath which

all the old people must wait until the Great Gates are opened—when once

they near the three-score years and ten—then they know. But they may

not speak. They may not say they know. They can only hint.

It was that an old lady hinted to me. Oh, such a broad hint it was! And

that is how I know.

She was close on seventy. Another summer, another winter, and yet

another spring, would see her three-score years and ten. The pension of

the country would be given her then and this great ambition had leapt

into the heart of her:

“I want to leave off work then, sir,” she said and a smile parted her

thin, wrinkled lips, lit two fires in her eyes, making her whole face

sparkle. “I want to leave off work then, sir, and I want to take a

little cottage. I only work now so that my sons shan’t have the expense

of keeping me. They’ve got expenses enough of their own.” Then her

little brown eyes, like beads in the deep hollows, took into them a

tender look as she thought of the trials and troubles which they had to

bear.

“Will you ever be able to get a cottage and keep yourself alive on

five shillings a week?” I asked.

She set her little mouth. She was a wee, tiny creature, shrivelled with

age. Everything about her was little and crumpled and old.

“It doesn’t need much to keep me alive now, sir,” she said. “The

cottage I can get for half a crown a week; and, of course, my sons are

real good boys—they send me a little now and then.”

I gazed at her—at her wee, withered body, wasted away to nothing in

tireless energy.

“You know you won’t care to leave off work when it comes to the time,”

said I; “you’ll hate to have nothing to do.”

She looked back at me with a cunning twinkle in her bright brown eyes.

As if she were fool enough to think that life would be bearable with

nothing to do! As if she had ever dreamed that the hands could be idle

while the heart was beating! As if she did not know that each must

labour until death stilled them both!

“I shan’t have nothing to do, sir,” she said when she had said it

already with her eyes. “Why, it’s just the time I’ve been looking for.

I’m too busy now.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Make a patchwork quilt.”

“A patchwork quilt?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“So that I can leave something behind me for people to remember me when

I’m gone.”

She said it quite cheerfully, quite happily. Her bright eyes glistened

like a wink of light in an old brown china tea-pot. She said it, too,

in that half-reserved way as though there were more to tell, but she

was not allowed even to whisper it.

Of course, there was more to tell! She never would be gone! Not really

gone! Every time you thought of her, the light of the other life would

start back into her eyes, the wrinkled lips would smile again. She

would never be really gone! And this was a hint—just a hint to let me

at least, for one, make sure about it.

“Then every night they go to bed,” said I, “and pull the patchwork

quilt tight round them——”

“Yes—and every time they throw it off in the morning——” said she.

“They’ll think of you?”

“They’ll think of me,” and she chuckled like a little child to think

how clever it was of her.

“Supposing,” said I, suddenly, in a whisper as the thought occurred to

me—“supposing you could do without any assistance from your boys——”

“I wish I could,” she said; “p’raps I can.”

“You wait and see,” said I.

Her seventieth birthday came round, and the evening before I posted to

her my little present. I made her my pensioner as long as she lives,

and on the twentieth day of each month she receives her tiny portion,

and on the twenty-first day of that month I get back in return a wee

bunch of flowers tied with red Angola wool.

“In payment of the Pension of the Patchwork Quilt,” I write, just on a

slip of paper; then off it goes every month. And as I drop it in the

letterbox, I can see her surrounded with all sorts of materials in

divers colours. I can hear the scratching of her needle as she sews

them together. I can picture her little eyes bent eagerly upon the

stitches for fear it might not be done in time.

And I take her gentle hint.

I know.

THE MOUSE-TRAP, HENRIETTA STREET

In Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, there is a mouse-trap, a cunningly

devised contrivance in which many a timid little mouse is caught. You

will find them in other streets than this. They are set in exactly the

same way, the same alluring bait, the same doors that open with so

generous an admission of innocence, the same doors that close with so

final and irrevocable a snap.

I have never watched the other ones at work. But I have seen four mice

caught at different times in Henrietta Street. Therefore, it is about

the mouse-trap in Henrietta Street that I feel qualified to speak.

One of these little mice I knew well. I knew her by name, where she

lived—the little hole in this great labyrinth of London down which she

vanished when the day’s work was done, or when any one frightened her

little wits and made her scamper home for safety. She even came once

and sat in my room, just on the edge of an armchair, taking tea and

cake in that frightened way, eyes ever peering, head ever on the alert,

as mice will eat their food.

So you will see I knew a good deal about her. It was through no

accident of chance that I saw her walk into the trap. I had heard that

such an event was likely. I was on the lookout for it.

During the day-time, she waited at the tables in an A.B.C. shop. Don’t

ask me what they paid her for it. I marvel at the wage for manual

labour when sometimes I am compelled to do a little job for myself. I

wonder why on earth the woman comes to tidy my rooms for ten shillings

a week. But she does. What is more, I find myself on the very point of

abusing her when she breaks a piece of my Lowestoft china, coming with

tears in her eyes to tell me of it.

Whatever it was they paid this little mouse of a child, she found it

a sufficient inducement to come there day after day, week after week,

with just that one short, marvellous evening in the six days and the

whole of the glorious seventh in which to do what she liked.

I suppose it would have gone on like that for ever. She would have

continued creeping in and out amongst the tables, her body on tip-toe,

her voice on tip-toe, the whole personality of her almost overbalancing

itself as it worked out its justification on the very tip of its toes.

She would have continued waiting on her customers, writing her little

checks in a wholly illegible handwriting, which only the girl at the

desk could read. She would have continued supplying me with the

three-pennyworth of cold cod steak for my kitten until I should have

been ordering five cold cod steaks for the entire family that was bound

to come. All these things would have gone on just the same, had not

the tempter come to lure her into the mouse-trap in Henrietta Street,

Covent Garden.

I saw him one morning, a dandy-looking youth from one of the hosier’s

shops in the Strand near by. He was having lunch—a cup of coffee and

some stewed figs and cream. Taste is a funny thing. And she was serving

him. She had served him. He was already hustling the food into his

mouth as he talked to her. But it was more than talking. He was saying

things with a pair of large calf eyes and she was laughing as she

listened.

I would sooner see a woman serious than see her laugh; that is, if some

one else were making love to her. For when she is serious there are two

ways about it; but when she laughs there is only time for one.

When she saw me, the little mouse came at once to the counter and took

down the piece of cold cod steak without a word. As she handed me the

bag and the little paper check, she said—

“How’s the kitten to-day?”

Then I knew she felt guilty, and was trying to distract my mind from

what she knew I had seen.

“Why are you ashamed of talking to the young man?” I asked.

“I’m not,” said she.

“Did you notice his eyes?” said I.

She looked at me for a moment, quite frightened, then she scampered

away into a corner and began wetting her pencil with her lips and

scribbling things. When the young man tapped his coffee-cup, she

pretended not to hear. But as soon as I stepped out into the street, I

turned round and saw her hurrying back to his table.

You guess how it went along. He asked her to marry him—then—there—at

once. You might have known he was a man of business.

She told me all about it when she came on one of those short evenings,

and nibbled a little piece of cake as she sat on the edge of my chair.

He wanted to marry her at once, but he was earning only eighteen

shillings a week and, as far as I could see, spent most of that on

neckties, socks and hair oil. He would no doubt begin to save it

directly they were married; but eighteen shillings was not enough to

keep them both.

“He’d better wait, then,” said I.

“He’s so afraid he’d lose me,” she whispered.

“And would he?” I asked.

She picked up a crumb from the floor, seeming thereby to suggest that

it was not in the nature of her to waste anything.

“Then I suppose you’ll be married in secret and go on just the same?”

She nodded her head.

“Where does he propose you should be married?”

“At the registry office in Henrietta Street.”

“The mouse-trap,” said I.

“No; the registry office,” she replied.

“And when’s it to be?” I asked.

“My next evening after this.”

Well, it came to that next evening. I got permission from a firm of

book-buyers to occupy a window opposite. And there I observed that

little parlour tragedy which you can see in the corner of any old

wainscotted room if only you keep quiet long enough.

It did not happen successfully that first time. For half an hour he

walked her up and down Henrietta Street. I saw my publisher come out

of his door, little dreaming of the comedy that was being played as

he passed them by. And every time they stopped outside the Registry

Office windows, she stood and read the notices of soldiers deserted the

army, of children that were lost, while he talked of the great things

that life was offering to them both just inside those varnished doors.

After a time they walked away and I came out from my hiding-place.

Something must have upset her, I thought, and I went across to look at

the notices in the window. There was nothing to frighten her there; yet

she had scampered away home to that little hole in Clapham, and there

vanished out of sight.

But it came at last. It came the very next of her short evenings. I was

on the lookout again. I saw them march up to the door. No hesitation

this time. He must have been eloquent indeed to have led her so surely

as that.

I saw him lift the spring of the trap. I saw her enter with tip-toe

steps, but more full of confidence now. Then I heard the sharp snap of

the door as it fell.

“They’ve caught a mouse,” said I to the book-buyer as I came downstairs.

“’Tis a good thing,” said he; “they’re the very devil for eating my

bindings.”

III

THE WONDERFUL CITY

III

THE WONDERFUL CITY

I saw a wonderful city to-day. Rows of houses there were. Domes of

great buildings with their dull brown roofs lifted silently into

the sky. Long streets in tireless avenues led from one cathedral to

another; some with the straightness of an arrow, others twisting and

turning in devious ways, yet all leading, as a well-planned street

should lead, to the crowning glory of some great edifice.

By the chance of Destiny I stood above it all and looked down. It was

strange that only the night before I had been dreaming that I was in

the City of New York, with its vast maze of buildings leaping to the

sky. In my dream I had stood wrapt in amazement. But I was silent with

a greater astonishment here. For as I gazed upon it, there had come a

man to my side and, seeing the direction of my eyes, he had said—

“There warn’t a trace o’ that there last night.”

“Not a trace?” said I. And I said it in amazement, for frankly I

disbelieved him.

“Not a trace,” he repeated solemnly.

“All that built in one night?” I asked again.

“In one night,” said he.

“But doesn’t it astound you?” said I. I tried to lift his lethargy to

the wonderment and admiration that was thrilling in my mind.

“It do seem strange,” he replied, “when yer come to think of it.”

“Well, then, come to think of it!” I exclaimed. “You can’t do better

than find the world strange. Come to think of it and, finding it

strange, you’ll come to believe in it!”

He stared at me with solemn eyes.

“Look at the dome of that cathedral,” I went on. “Could you set to work

and, in a single night, build a vast piece of architecture like that,

so many times higher than yourself?”

“That ain’t no cathedral,” said he.

“Have you ever seen a cathedral?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, then, how do you know it isn’t?”

He could give me no reply and I continued in my enthusiasm—

“Look at that street, cut through all obstacles, leading straight as

though a thousand instruments of latter-day science had been used in

the making of it. Look at this avenue turning to right and to left.

Do you see that great cluster of buildings, a very parliament of

houses, set round a vast space that would shame the great square of St.

Peter’s, in Rome. Only look at the——”

I turned round and he had gone. I could see his figure retreating in

the distance. Every moment he turned his head, looking round, as one

who is pursued yet fears to show his cowardice by running away. He

thought I was mad, I have no doubt. Every one thinks you mad when you

say the moon is a dead world or the sun is a fiery furnace. To be sane,

you must only remark upon the coldness of the moon, or the warmth of

the sun. To be sane, you must speak of the things of this world only in

terms of people’s bodies. They do not understand unless.

And so, when the man left me, I was alone, looking over the wonderful

city. For an hour then, I amused myself by naming the different

streets, by assigning to the various buildings the uses to which it

seemed they might be put.

That huge edifice with the cupola of bronze was the Cathedral of

Shadows, where prayers were said in darkness and never a lamp was lit.

The street which led to its very steps, that was called the Street of

Sighs. Here, in a lighter part of the city, approached to its silent

doors by Tight Street, was the Bat’s Theatre, where you could hear,

but never see the performance as it progressed. A little further on

there was Blind Alley—a cul-de-sac, terminating in a tiny building, the

Chapel of Disappointment. There was the Avenue of Progress, the Church

of Whispers, the Bridge of Stones and a thousand other places, the

names of which went from me no sooner than they crossed my mind.

It may be possible to build a wonderful city in a night. I only know

how utterly impossible it is to name all its streets and its palaces in

one day.

And then, while I was still thus employed, I saw the man returning with

a jug of beer.

I nodded to the vessel which he carried in his hand.

“You don’t need to think about that,” said I, “to understand it.”

A broad grin spread across his face. He had found me sane after all. I

had talked about beer in terms of bodily comfort.

“I need to drink it,” said he with a laugh.

“You do,” said I.

Then, as if to appease me for the moment e’er he passed on his way, he

returned to our former subject and, with a serious voice, he said—

“When yer come to think of it,” said he, “it do seem wonderful that

them moles is blind.”

“Not so blind,” said I, looking down at the wonderful city, “not so

blind as those who can see.”

He thought I had gone mad again, and he walked away with his jug of

beer.

BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF GOD

I often wonder why God evolved a creature so antagonistic to all His

laws as woman. I must tell you what I mean.

Bellwattle—she is named Bellwattle for the simple reason that one

day in an inspired moment, she called her husband Cruikshank, and he

replied giving her the name Bellwattle, quite foolish except between

husband and wife—Bellwattle has the genuine mother’s heart for animals.

Everything that crawls, walks or flies, Bellwattle loves. Some things,

certainly, she loves more than others; but for all she has the

deep-rooted, protective instinct. Spiders, for example, terrify her;

flies and beetles she loathes, but would not kill one of them even if

they crawled upon her dress. And they do.

Now Bellwattle has a garden which she loves. You can see already, if

you have but the mind for it, the tragic conflict which, with that love

of her flowers, she must wage between her own soul and the laws of God.

For this, I must tell you, is a lovely garden—not one of those prim-set

portions, with well-cut hedges and beds in orthodox array. It is an old

garden that has been allowed to run to ruin and Bellwattle, possessing

it in the nick of time, has planted primroses amongst the nettles; has

carved a little herbaceous border where once potatoes grew. She has

thrown roses here, there, and everywhere and, in soap and sugar boxes

covered with glass at the bottom of the garden under the nut trees, she

forces the old-fashioned flowers that we knew—you and I—in the long-ago

days when sweet-william and candytuft were things to boast about and

foxgloves grew like beanstalks up to heaven.

But perhaps the most glorious thing in Bellwattle’s garden, that also

in which she takes the greatest pride, is her hedges of sweet pea. They

grow in great walls of dazzling colour, and the bees hum about them all

day long. But they are the devil and all to raise.

Now this is where the tragic conflict comes in, between the mice and

the birds and the slugs and Bellwattle’s kitten and Bellwattle’s heart.

It is a terrible conflict, I can tell you; for the laws of God are

unalterable, and so is the heart of Bellwattle.

This, then, is what happens: Bellwattle forgot to cover the sweet pea

seeds with red lead. It is just the sort of thing a woman would forget.

I doubt if I could think of it myself. Then followed the natural

result. A shrew-mouse got hold of one or two of them, and Bellwattle

wondered why on earth God ever made shrew-mice.

“But they’re dear little things,” I told her.

“I can’t help that,” said she. “What’s the sense in making a thing that

goes and eats up other things?”

Which, of course, was unanswerable.

Two days after this had happened, the kitten was seen playing with a

live shrew-mouse.

Bellwattle screamed.

“Oh, the little wretch! If I could only catch it!”

“What—the mouse?” shouted Cruikshank.

“No, no; the wretched little kitten! Look at the way she’s torturing

it! Oh, I never saw such a cruel little beast in all my life!” and her

face grew rosy red.

Now, Cruikshank is a dutiful husband. Moreover, he knows positively

nothing about women. Perhaps that is why. When, therefore, he realised

that it was the kitten who was the cruel little beast, and a sense of

duty claiming him, he chased it all over the garden, picking up stones

as he ran.

“Make her drop it!” cried Bellwattle.

“I will, if I can hit her,” replied Cruikshank and, like a cowboy

throwing a lasso from a galloping horse, he flung a stone. The kitten

was struck upon the flank and in its terror it dropped the mouse and

fled. Cruikshank approached it and, he assures me, with much pride in

his prowess picked up the poor little mouse by the hind leg. Then he

looked up and saw Bellwattle’s face. It was white—ashen white.

“You’ve hurt her,” she said, half under her breath.

“It’s better than hurt,” said Cruikshank—“it’s dead.”

“No—the kitten—you hit it with a stone.”

“’Twas a jolly good shot,” said Cruikshank.

“I never meant you to hit her,” said Bellwattle.

Cruikshank looked disappointed. To hit a flying object whilst one is in

a tornado of motion one’s self is no mean feat. Failing an appreciation

of the woman herself, I am not surprised he was disappointed.

“I made her drop it, anyhow,” he said.

“You’ve frightened her out of her life and now perhaps she’ll never

come back,” said Bellwattle, and in and out of the garden she went,

all through the forests of rhododendra—where the kitten, I should tell

you, hunts for big game—and with the gentlest, the softest, the most

wooing voice in the world, she cried the kitten’s name. Cruikshank was

at a loss to understand it. When he met her down one of the paths still

calling, with tears in her eyes, he assures me he felt so ashamed of

himself that he began, in a feeble way, calling for the kitten too.

When they met again, still unsuccessful in their search, he dared not

look her in the face.

Now this is only one of the conflicts that take place in Bellwattle’s

soul. She worships the birds, but they eat the young shoots of the

sweet peas. Then she hates them; then the kitten catches one. And now,

Cruikshank tells me, he will have no hand in the matter.

“You leave it to God,” I advised.

“I do,” said he; “it’s too difficult for me.”

I believe myself it is too difficult for God.

Only the other day, in the farmyard, Bellwattle saw two cocks

fighting—fighting for the supremacy of the yard. Cruikshank and I

looked on, really enjoying the sport of it in our hearts, yet deadly

afraid of saying so.

“Can’t you stop them?” exclaimed Bellwattle. “They’re hurting each

other!”

We neither of us moved a hand.

“If you don’t, I shall have to go and do it myself,” said she.

“Much better leave it to God,” said I. “They’re settling matters that

have nothing to do with you.”

But do you think logic so profound as that deterred her? Not a bit

of it! Out she ran into the farmyard, throwing her arms about in the

air—as women will when they wish to interfere with the laws of God.

“Shoo! shoo! shoo!” shouted Bellwattle.

And one of the cocks, at the critical moment of victory, reluctantly

leaving go of its opponent’s comb, looked up with considerable

annoyance into her face and shrieked back—

“Cock-a-doodle-do!”

Cruikshank glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and out of the

corner of his mouth he whispered—

“We shan’t have any eggs to-morrow.”

REALISM

This word—realism—has lost its meaning. So, for that matter, has many

another word in the language. Sentiment is one and, as a natural

consequence, the word sentimental is another. Realism and sentiment,

in fact, have got so shuffled about, for all the world like the King

and Queen in a pack of cards that now, instead of sentiment being hand

in hand with reality, they have become almost opposed. To express a

sentiment is now tantamount to ignoring a reality.

Joseph Surface may be responsible for this. It would not seem unlikely.

But wherever the responsibility lies, it is an everlasting pity; no one

has had the common politeness to replace or even create a substitute

for the thing which they have taken away.

Realism, which now means an expression of things as they happen without

any relation to things as they immortally are, is robbed of its true

significance. But no word is left in its place. Sentiment, which now

means an expression of momentary emotionalism, instead of what one

perceives to be true in the highest moments of one’s thoughts, has left

a blank in the language which no one seems willing to or capable of

filling up.

Now all this is an irreparable loss. How great a loss it is can be seen

by the fact that no two people’s terminology is the same when they are

discussing a subject wherein these words must be employed. In the space

of five minutes both are at cross purposes; in a tangle from which they

find it well-nigh impossible to extricate themselves.

I do not for one instant propose to supply here a solution to the

difficulty; nor can I coin two words to repair the loss sustained. All

I wish to do is to tell a real story, one that happened only a short

while ago, to illustrate what seems to me to be realism in comparison

with what realism is supposed to be.

Our little servant-girl was married—married to the young man who

brought the milk of a morning. The courtship had been going on for some

time before I realised the glorious things that were happening. Then,

when I was told about it, I used to peep out of my bedroom window. As

soon as I heard that cry of his—impossible to write—when he opened the

gate and rattled with his can down the area steps, then up I jumped

from my bed and lifted the window.

They must have been wonderful moments for Emily, those early mornings

when, with heart beating at the sound of his cry, she had run for the

big white jug, then dragged out the time lest he should think she had

opened the door too eagerly.

Many a time have I seen them down at the bottom of those area steps;

she leaning up against the pillar of the door watching him, rapt in

admiration, while he filled up the big white jug.

It is a fine thing for you when your little maid has eyes for the

milkman. You get a good measure, I can tell you. He would not seem

stingy to her for the world. I have seen him dipping his little

half-pint measure times and again into the big can as he talked to her

and, as she held out the white jug, just trickling it in till our two

pints were more than accounted for.

All this went on for weeks together. Emily sang like a lark in the

morning when she rose betimes to do her work. The worst of the

scrubbing was all finished with and Emily’s hair was tidy long before

there came that weird falsetto cry, or the sound of the milk cans

rattled down the area steps. Oh, I can assure you, it is an excellent

thing when your little maid has eyes for the milkman. She never gets up

late of a morning.

And then, at last, with great to-doings in Emily’s home out at Walham

Green, they were married. I asked Emily what she would like for a

wedding present and she said:

“I’d like one o’ them old brass candlesticks—same as what you ’ave in

your study.”

You see Emily had acquired some taste. I call it taste because it is

mine. Good or bad, she had acquired it.

“Wouldn’t you prefer silver?” I asked, thinking I knew what silver

would mean in Walham Green.

But she only replied:

“No—I like the brass ones—’cos they’re old. I’ve a fancy for old

things.”

So a pair of old brass candlesticks was what I gave her. She wrote

and thanked me for them. She said they looked just lovely on George’s

writing table and that one of these days, when I was passing that way,

I ought to go and look at them.

I did pass through Walham Green eventually. It was some months later.

She had probably forgotten all about having asked me, but I paid my

visit all the same.

For a moment or so, as I stood on the doorstep, I felt a twinge of

trepidation. I could not remember her married name. But it was all

right. She opened the door herself. Then, as she stood there, with a

beaming smile lighting her face from ear to ear, reminding me so well

of those early mornings when I used to peep out of my bedroom window

and peer into the area below, I saw that soon there would be another

little Emily or another perky little George to bring a smile or a cry

into the world.

“You’re happy?” said I.

“Oh—sir!” said she.

She showed me up then to the sitting-room where was George’s writing

table and the pair of old brass candlesticks. She pointed to the table.

“’E made it ’imself,” she said, not meaning it in explanation; but

it did explain the queer shape. “’E made it out of an old box and I

covered it with felt. Ain’t it splendid?”

I agreed with my whole heart. Everything was splendid. The whole room

might have been made out of an old box. And yet I could see what a joy

it was to her. There was her acquired taste in evidence everywhere,

but except for my poor pair of candlesticks, everything was imitation.

It made no matter. She thought they were really old and liked them

immeasurably better than the things I had collected with such care at

home.

“Could anything be nicer than this?” said I with real enthusiasm.

“I don’t believe it could, sir,” said she.

And then, in little half-amused, half-curious, half-frightened

whispers, she told me how they were going to call the baby after me.

“Supposing it’s a girl,” said I.

No—they had not reckoned on that. When you make up your mind properly

to a boy—a boy it is up to the last moment. After that, you forget how

you made up your mind, you are so wildly delighted that it is alive at

all.

I walked across to the window.

“So you’re radiantly happy,” I said.

“’E’s just wonderful,” she replied; “I thought it couldn’t last at

first—but it’s just the same.”

I gazed out of the window—envious, perhaps.

“What does this look on to?” I asked.

“A slaughter-house, sir.”

She said it full of cheerfulness, full of the joy of her own

life. I stared and stared out of the window. A slaughter-house! A

slaughter-house! and here was a little slip of a woman passing through

those trembling hours before the birth of her first child!

Now _that_ is what your realist would call a chance! He would make a

fine subject out of that. He would show you the growth of that idea

in the woman’s mind. He would picture her drawn to gaze out of that

awesome window whenever they dragged the lowing, frightened cattle to

their doom. And last of all, with wonderful photographic touches, he

would describe for you the birth of a _still-born_ child. Then with a

feeling of sickness in the heart of you, you would lay down the story

and exclaim, “How real!”

That is what is meant by realism to-day.

Yet somehow or other I prefer my Emily; not because the boy _is_ called

after me—but because, whatever he may be called, he is alive, he is

well, and he kicks his little legs like wind-mills.

Now _that_ is an immortal truth.

THE SABBATH

When I was a little boy—younger even than I am now—my father had strict

ideas upon Sabbath behaviour. We might read nothing, I remember, but

what was true. Now, if you come to think of it, that limits your range

of literary entertainment in a terrible way. It drove me to such books

as “Little Willie’s Promise—a True Story” or “What Alice Found—Taken

from Life.”

One Sunday afternoon, perched high in the mulberry-tree, I was found

with a copy of the Saturday’s daily paper. It was smeared with the

bloodstains of many mulberries, whose glorious last moments had been

with me.

“What have you got there?” asked my father from below.

I told him. It was Sunday. My story at least was true.

“Come down at once!” said he.

I descended, finding many more difficulties to overcome than I had

discovered in my ascent.

My father waxed impatient.

“Can’t you get down any quicker than that?” he asked. He had a book on

rose-growing in his hand, which, being quite true, he was taking out on

that glorious afternoon to read and enjoy in the garden.

With all respect, I told him that I did not want to break my neck and I

continued slowly with my laborious descent. When I reached the ground,

he eyed me suspiciously.

“How dare you read the paper on Sunday?” he asked.

“I was only reading the police reports,” said I, humbly; “I thought

they were true.”

He held out his hand expressively. I timidly put forth mine, thinking

he wanted to congratulate me on my taste.

“The paper!” said he, emphatically.

I yielded, without a word.

“Now, if you want to read on Sunday,” said he, “go into the house and

learn the Collect for the third Sunday after Trinity. And never let me

see a boy of your age reading the paper again.”

“Not on week-days?” said I.

“No, never!” he replied, and, as he walked away, he scanned the Stock

Exchange quotations with a stern and unrelenting face.

I do not want to argue about the justice of this, for now that I am a

little older, the after effect, though not what my father expected, has

proved quite admirable. If the newspaper was not true enough to read on

week-days, let alone Sundays, I came to the conclusion that it must be

very full of lies indeed. And all this has been very helpful to me ever

since. I think of it now as I open my daily paper in the morning, and I

thank my father for it from the bottom of my heart. It has saved me a

deal of unnecessary credulity.

I remember, too, that all games—all games but chess—were strictly

forbidden. That also has left an impression on my mind—an ineffaceable

impression about the game of chess. It seems a very stern game to me—a

game rigid in its expression of the truth. The King and Queen are

always real people, moving—far be it from me to allude to Royalty—in

straightened paths; the Queen impulsively, the King in staid dignity,

one step at a time. I always behold the Knight as one, erratic and

Quixotic in all he does; the Bishop swift and to the point, thereby

connecting himself in my mind with the days when the Bishops went out

to war and brought the Grace of God with them on to the battlefield,

rather than with the Bishops of to-day, who keep the Grace of God at

home.

So I think of the game of Chess—the only game we were ever allowed to

play on Sunday—the game my father loved so well above all others.

I don’t know what it is about the observance of the Sabbath, but to me

it seems a beautiful idea, like a beautiful bell; yet a bell that has

been cracked and rings with a strange, false, unmeaning note. No one

seems to be able to get the true tone of it. Heaven knows they ring it

enough. The Church and such followers of the Church as my father are

always pealing its message for the world to hear; yet I wonder how many

people detect in it the sound of that discordant note of hypocrisy.

Nevertheless, there is something grand in that conception of One

creating a vast universe in six days or six ages—whichever you will—and

resting at His ease upon the seventh. Nor is it less grand to work

throughout a common week, making a home, and on the Sabbath to cease

from labour. The whole world is agreed that that day of rest is needed;

but are they to lay down a law that what is rest for one man is rest

for another?

If that is the only way they can think of doing it; if that is the

only interpretation of the word—rest—which they can find, then, so far

as the Sabbath is concerned, we shall be a nation of hypocrites or

lawbreakers for the rest of our days. And of the two, may I be one who

breaks the law. For, do what you will with it, human nature has reached

that development when it insists upon thinking for itself and, one man,

thinking it all out most carefully, will declare that a game of chess

is not an abomination of the Sabbath, while another will read the

police reports in the daily papers because they are true.

Fifty years ago, Charles Kingsley, that strenuous apostle of health,

urged that it was better to play cricket on the Green at Eversley than

stay at home and be a hypocrite—or a gambler, which is much the same

thing. But his was only one honest voice amongst the thousands of

others who have preached a very different gospel to that.

Only a short while ago, at a little tennis club in the suburbs of

London, there came up before the committee the question as to whether

play should not be allowed on Sunday. The club was composed of city

clerks, of members of the Stock Exchange, of men labouring the daily

round to keep together those homes of which both the Church and the

nation are so justly proud.

Every one seemed in favour of it, until the Vicar of the parish rose

and said that seeing there was a high fence all round the ground,

and that the players would be hidden from the sight of the public at

large, he saw no reason why play should not be allowed out of Church

hours—that was to say, from two till six.

“But,” said he, “I must most vehemently protest against any playing of

the game of croquet.”

A member of the committee, one with a lame leg, who was debarred from

tennis, but was known to make his ten hoop break at croquet, asked

immediately for the reason of this protest.

“I work all the week in the city,” said he; “I have no other chance for

playing except late on Saturday and on Sunday. Why should you prevent

croquet?”

“Because,” said the Vicar, “the sound of the croquet balls would reach

the ears of people passing by. And what do you imagine they’d think

if they heard people playing croquet? I make no objection to tennis

because, if played in a gentlemanly way, no one outside need know that

a game was going on—but croquet! You must remember we have to consider

others as well as ourselves.”

“You think it would make them feel envious?” asked the lame man.

“I mean nothing of the kind,” said the Vicar.

“Then what do you imagine they would think?”

“They would realise that the Sabbath—the day of rest—was being broken.”

“Then we have your consent to break it with tennis,” said the Chairman.

“It seems to me,” said the Vicar, “that this discussion is being

carried into the region of absurdity.”

“I quite agree with the Vicar,” said the lame man.

VII

HOUSE TO LET

VII

HOUSE TO LET

If I only knew more about women than I do—if I only knew anything about

them at all—I might be able to understand the vagarious indetermination

of the lady who is contemplating the occupation of a little house quite

close to me here in the country.

But I know nothing about the sex—well, next to nothing. That is as near

to the truth as a man will get on this subject. His next to nothing,

in fact, is next to the truth. And so, with this open confession of

ignorance, I can explain nothing about this lady. I can only tell you

all the funny things she does.

There is this house to let. Well, it is less than a house. An agent,

flourishing his pen over the book of orders to view, would call it a

maisonette—what is more, he would be right. It is a little house—a

little, tiny house. The view from the balcony round the top of it is

beautiful; but from inside, I doubt if you can see anything at all. I

have never been inside, but that is what I imagine.

Now, the strange thing about this lady’s attraction for it is that she

has occupied it once before. There her children were brought up. From

there they were sent out into the world upon that hazardous journey of

fortune: that same journey in quest of the golden apple for which the

three sons have always set forth, ever since the first fairy tale was

written. And so the little house is filled with recollections for her.

She remembers—I have heard her speak of it—the day when Dicky, the

youngest boy, fell out from one of the windows. Not a long fall, but

it was the devil and all to carry him back into the house. She did not

say it was the devil and all. I say it for her, because I know when she

was telling it, that was the way she wanted to put it. But a woman can

look a little phrase like that, which is so much better than saying it.

She remembers also the day when they had nothing in the house to eat

and she, saying such things to her husband as God has given him memory

for the rest of his life, had to go out and scrape together whatever

she could find. It was a cold day. There was snow on the ground. Snow

in the beginning of May! Heaven only knows how she managed. But she

succeeded.

There is that about women. They will get food for their children, even

when famine is in the land, or they will die. I know that much about

them. They have died in Ireland.

Well, all these things she remembers; things which, softened by time,

are no doubt pleasant memories ere this. And yet she cannot make up

her mind. Where she has been since they went away, I do not know.

Travelling, I imagine. But here she is back once more, doubtless

worrying the life out of the house agent, who is continually being

jostled in the balance of thinking he has, then thinking he has not,

let a very doubtful property.

Every morning she comes and looks over the old place. I suppose she

is staying in the neighbourhood. From every side she views it and all

the while she talks to herself. Now, women do this more than you would

think. They do it when they are going to bed at night. They do it when

they are getting up in the morning. It always seems as if there were

some one inside them to whom they must tell the truth, because, I

believe, they are the most truthful beings in the world—to themselves.

Only yesterday, when she thought she was absolutely alone, I heard her

saying—

“You wouldn’t like it, you know, once you were fixed up there again.

It’s out of the way, of course, quiet, but you wouldn’t like it.”

And then, having told herself the truth, she began immediately to

contradict it.

Why they do this is more than I can tell you. The only people who can

tell the truth, they seemingly dislike it more than any one else. A man

loves the truth, lives for it, dies for it, but seldom tells it. With a

woman it is just the opposite, and I cannot for the life of me tell you

why.

“You’d be a fool if you took it,” she said to herself as she went away

to the house agent’s. “You don’t know who you’ll have for neighbours.

They might be disgusting people.”

I followed her to the house agent’s, and this, if you please, was the

first question she put to him—

“What sort of people do you think’ll take the house over the way?”

I pitied the house agent from the bottom of my heart, because how

on earth could he know? Yet upon his answer hung all his chances of

letting. I thought he replied very cleverly.

“They’re sure to be good people,” said he; “we only get the best class

round here.”

And then, just listen to her retort—

“But you can’t tell,” said she. “What’s the good of pretending you

know. It might be a butcher and his family. You couldn’t stop them if

they wanted the house.”

The agent leaned back in his chair, then leaned forward over his desk,

turning over pages and pages of a ledger.

“Well, will you take an order to view this one?” said he. “Same rent—a

little more accommodation.”

“No, I don’t want to see any more,” she replied. “This is the one I

like best.”

“Well, would you like to settle on that?” said the agent. “I’ll write

to the landlord to-night.”

“I’ll let you know to-morrow,” said she.

For three weeks she has gone on just like this.

And it is still to let, that little house in the bowl of my old apple

tree. But every morning she comes just the same and, sitting on the

topmost branch, she chatters to herself incessantly for half an hour,

as starlings and women do—for she is a lady starling. I shall be

curious to know when she makes up her mind, but, knowing nothing about

women and less than nothing about starlings, I cannot say when or what

it will be.

VIII

A SUFFRAGETTE

VIII

A SUFFRAGETTE

She thanked God, she told me, that she had never been married.