passed through other hands than mine, it gathers an indefinable charm
about it. Old china, old cups and saucers, whether they be ugly or
beautiful, are priceless by reason of that faint murmuring of other
lives which clings around them. In the mere tinkling of the china as it
is brought in upon the tray, I can hear a thousand conversations and
gossipings coming dimly to my ears out of the wealth of years which is
heaped upon them.
For this reason would I always use the old china which it is my good
fortune to possess. A breakfast-table, a tea-table spread with china
which can tell you nothing than that it has but lately come from the
grimy potteries, makes poor company to sit down with. Yet let it be but
Spode, or Worcester, or Lowestoft, and every silence that falls upon
you is filled with the whisperings of these priceless companions.
I have no sympathy with the collector who locks his china away because
it is rare and worth so much in pounds and shillings and pence. He is
no more than a gaoler, incarcerating in an eternal prison the very best
friends he has, and just, if you please, because they are his.
What if there is the risk of their being broken! A rivet here, a
rivet there will make them speak again. I have a Spode milk-jug with
forty-five rivets in it and it is more eloquent to me than all the
modern china you could find, however perfect it may be. In fact, I
would sooner have a piece that has been mended. It shows that in those
long-ago days, where all romance lies hiding for us now, it shows that
they cared for their treasures and would not let them be discarded
because they happened upon evil times. I have also an old blue and
white tea-pot with a silver spout. A dealer sniffed at it the other day.
“May have been good once,” said he.
“’Tis better now,” said I. “So would you and I be if we’d been through
the wars.”
“Do you mean to say you’d prefer me with a wooden arm?” he asked.
“I would,” said I. “You’d be a better man. You couldn’t grasp so much.”
But the other day I found a treasure. Miss B——, the old spinster
lady in whose farm I have my little dwelling, is by way of being the
reincarnation of a jackdaw. She has cupboards and chests in every room
in which lie hidden a thousand old things which have been in her family
for years. Yesterday, in turning out an old drawer, I came across a
quaint little contrivance that looked like a string bag, only it was
beautifully made in three parts, all composed of a wonderful lace-work
of fine string and knitted together, each one by a delicate stitching
of white horsehair.
I brought it out into the kitchen, tenderly in my hand.
“Whatever is this?” I asked.
She took it in her fingers and looked at it for a moment, then,
inconsequently, she laid it down upon the kitchen table.
“That—” said she, “that was my great, great grandmother’s bonnet. She
wore it up till the time she died.”
“Why, it’s nearly two hundred years old!” I exclaimed.
“If it’s a day,” said she.
I gazed at it for some moments. Then suddenly it seemed to move, to
raise itself from the table. Another instant and it was spread out,
decked with a tiny piece of pink ribbon, on the head of an old lady—but
oh, so old! Her silvery white hair thrust out in little curls and
coils through the mesh of the string, and there she was, with a great
broad skirt and big puff sleeves bobbing me a curtsey before my very
eyes.
I turned to Miss B——
“Do you see?” I asked.
“See what?” said she.
“Your great, great grandmother.”
“I never saw her in my life,” she replied.
“But under the string bonnet!” I exclaimed.
“Goodness! That ’ud fall to pieces if any one tried to put it on now.
It’s no good to me. You can have it if you like.”
Then I understood why she could not see her great, great grandmother,
and, with a feeling of compassion for her loneliness, I took the old
lady into my arms. Miss B—— went to the sink to peel some potatoes.
“You’re perfectly beautiful,” I whispered, and her old face wrinkled
all over with smiles.
“They used to tell me that when I was a girl,” said she.
“You’re more beautiful now,” said I.
“What’s that you’re saying?” asked Miss B—— over her shoulder.
“What I should have said,” said I, “if I’d lived two hundred years
ago.”
XVI
THE NEW MALADY
XVI
THE NEW MALADY
In every age there is a new disease—there is a new malady—a strange
sickness. The whole army of medical science goes out to meet it and
there is pitched a battle wherein lives are sacrificed, honour made and
lost. But in the end the glorious banner of medical skill is generally
carried triumphant from the field. Some old foes truly there are who
are not conquered yet, with whom a guerilla warfare is continuously
being waged. Never can they be brought into the open field; never can
they be come upon at close quarters. Sometimes in a skirmish they are
routed and put to flight; yet ever they return, lessened in numbers, no
doubt, weakened in strength, but still a marauding enemy to mankind.
Then apart from these, there is that new malady, which, with its stern
inevitability, the age always brings amidst its retinue of civilisation.
It would seem, notwithstanding the dictum of the Bab Ballad-maker, that
they are not always blessings which follow in Civilisation’s train.
One disease after another has come amongst us from out the ranks of
civilisation. And now appears the latest of all, seizing upon its
victims under the very walls of that fortress of medical science.
It is the disease of bearing children, the disease of making life.
We all know how science with its anæsthetics, with its deftly made
instruments and its consummate skill, is attacking the enemy from every
quarter. Yet the fatality of the sickness is steadily growing. More
women die in childbirth now than ever fell its victims in the days
when the services of a common mid-wife were all that were at their
disposal.
It is terrible sometimes to think how rapidly this most natural of
all functions—since upon it hangs the existence of all people in the
world—it is terrible to think how rapidly it is shaping into the
awesome features of a disease. Women are as ashamed of its conditions
now as they would be if smallpox had pitted their delicate skins.
They speak of it as of some dreadful operation—which indeed it has
become—and, instead of glorying over a possession which they alone
command, they will talk of it as a curse which, suffering alone, they
should be given compensation for. They ask for the vote! Great God!
As if the vote could compensate them for the loss of bearing children
as the God of nature meant they should be borne! As if any form of
compensation could ease such a loss as that!
Success and civilisation—these are the two subtle poisons from the
effects of which we are all suffering. Nothing fails like success!
Nothing degrades so much as civilisation!
A little while ago a woman who had given birth to a fine child told me
quite frankly that she herself was not going to feed it.
“Do you mean suckle it?” said I.
She did not like that word and she shuddered.
“You object to the use of the word?” I suggested.
“Is it _quite_ nice?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Words are only ugly,” said I, “when they express ugly deeds. I can
understand if you find the deed ugly you don’t like the word.”
She answered that she did not mind the thing itself. “You see,” said
she, “it’s quite impossible for me to do it. We’ve been asked up—my
husband and I—to Chatsworth to meet the King, and it would be foolish
to lose such an opportunity—wouldn’t it? I can’t go up like this, so I
must have a sort of operation.”
“So you’ve made up your mind?” said I.
She screwed up her eyes as her conscience faltered in her breast.
“Practically,” she replied.
“Well, if not quite,” I suggested, “write to the King, and ask him
whether he would sooner meet you at Chatsworth or have a stalwart son
given to the country.”
She told me I made the most absurd remarks she had ever heard from any
one and she walked away. “Besides,” said she, over her shoulder, “it’s
a daughter.”
I found her name amongst those invited to Chatsworth to meet the King.
I saw her picture in a photograph of the Chatsworth group and she
looked beautiful. Her figure was that of a child who had never known
maternity.
There are traitors even in the camp of medical science, thought I.
Nothing degrades science so much as the march of civilisation—no social
woman fails so utterly as when she succeeds in meeting the King.
I have a friend, in the tiny chintz parlour of whose cottage in the
country a certain collection of prints adorn the walls. For the most
part they are steel engravings, valuable enough in their way. But it is
the subject common to them all, rather than the intrinsic value of each
picture, which has persuaded my friend to their collection. One and
all, with the tenderest treatment you can imagine, they portray a baby
feeding at the gentle breast of its mother. No other pictures in the
room are there but these, and there must at least be a fair dozen of
them. You cannot fail but notice them. The similarity of their subject
alone would force itself upon your mind.
Yet, would you believe it, the ladies who come there to call upon my
friend’s wife, regard them with horror and alarm. As their eyes fall
upon them, they turn sharply away, only to be met with yet another
of those improper pictures upon an opposite wall. With far greater
equanimity and even interest would they look upon a series of Hogarth’s
prints. The vicar of the parish, too, was alarmed. He asked my friend
whether he did not think that such pictures did harm.
“Of course I know,” said he, “it is a natural function and is all right
in its proper place. I don’t mean to say that it would do harm to you
or to me, of course—we’re old enough to discriminate. But younger
people are apt to look at these things in a different light.”
“Do you know that as a fact?” asked my friend quietly.
Now, the vicar was a truthful man, who had read that the devil is the
father of all liars. He held his head thoughtfully for a moment.
“It is what I imagine would be the case,” said he. “On which account I
always disapprove of those pictures which, what you might say, expose
the body of a woman in the so-called interests of Art. With a man and
his wife—if I may say so—such things are different; but to make a show
of a woman’s nakedness, that is to me a form of prostitution at which
honestly I shudder every time it comes my way.”
“I see—I see your point,” said my friend. “If there is to be
prostitution, let it be that of the wife. I see your point. But why
call marriage a sacrament? And why solemnise it in a church? I should
have thought the meat-market had been a better place.”
Great heavens! No wonder the disease is spreading! No wonder is it
that women approach the hour of deliverance in fear and trembling,
for neither do they fit themselves for it, nor are they proud of the
birthright which is theirs alone. For the sake of appearances, because
they are not well enough off, because of inconvenience, they will give
up all they possess for the mess of pottage. Civilisation indeed has
made a strange place of the world. There are few men and women left in
it now.
Now and again you may run across a true mother, but all the rest of
women that you meet are only fit to be called by a name that is indeed
too ugly to write.
A true woman I heard of only the other day. She was brought to her
bed of childbirth. In the room there was that still hush, the hush
of awe when out of the “nowhere into here” the something which is
life is about to be conjured out of the void of nothingness which is
death. For long, trembling moments all was still. The faint whispers
and muffled sounds only made the quietness yet more potent. And then,
suddenly, out of the silence, came the shrill living, trumpet-cry of a
new voice—the voice of a little child.
The woman stretched her arms and smiled, as if in that cry she had
heard the voice of God.
“You must lie still,” they whispered in her ear—“there is yet another
child.”
“Thank God!” she moaned, and the silence fell round them once more.
XVII
BELLWATTLE AND THE DIGNITY OF MEN
XVII
BELLWATTLE AND THE DIGNITY OF MEN
We were all sitting out in the garden having tea under the nut
trees—Bellwattle, Cruikshank and I. They use the old Spode
tea-service—apple green and gold and black—whenever tea is taken out
of doors, and I would give anything to describe to you the pictures
that rise in my mind with the sight of that quaint old tea-service,
the smell of the sweetbriars and the scent of the stocks. They are
indescribable, those pictures. No one will ever paint them to my
satisfaction, neither with colours nor with words. They are composed
with such historical accuracy, are so redolent of their time, that it
would need somebody with a memory reaching over one hundred and fifty
years to trace them as they appear to me. Now, if my memory reaches
over five minutes it is doing well—and many there are the same as I.
The characters I see are arrayed in costumes so befitting to their
period, they speak of things so faithful to their day, that no man,
unless he had lived in the eighteenth century, could possibly reproduce
them. I see their dainty costumes—I hear their quaint speech, but not
one jot or one tittle of it all could I put down upon paper. Yet I know
those pictures are true as true can be.
Why is this? Is there a memory within us which harks back to lives
we have lived before? Is it by the same reason we feel that certain
incidents have come to us again out of the far-off past? I was
pondering over it all that afternoon, when suddenly Bellwattle broke
the silence which surrounded us.
“Why were elephants called elephants?” she asked.
Cruikshank—of whom, if it cannot be said that he knows the woman in his
wife, at least knows her queer little habits—passed his cup without
amazement for more tea. But I—well, it took my breath away.
“Whatever made you ask that?” I inquired.
She shrugged her shoulders as eloquently as she could, being occupied
with Cruikshank’s third cup of tea.
“I don’t know,” she replied—“Who called them elephants, anyhow?”
To this second question, Cruikshank was as ready as if he were at
Sunday school.
“Adam,” said he. “Adam named all the beasts and he called them
elephants.”
“But why elephants?” asked Bellwattle.
Cruikshank looked at me across the little garden table. There was an
appeal in his eyes, as though he would say, “Go on—I’ve answered mine.
It’s your turn now. Don’t let her think we don’t know.”
For you must understand that, in their dealings with women, there is
a certain freemasonry amongst men. If by nature their sex is debarred
from the greatest of all functions, they must at least steal dignity
by the assumption of great wisdom. No man may ever admit ignorance to
a woman. So long as her questions have nothing to do with instinct, he
will answer them, whether or no he tells her the greatest balderdash
you ever heard. All men in their vows of masonry must swear to do
this. We should be in a sorry way if women did not look up to us for
knowledge.
When then I received this secret sign from Cruikshank, I did the best
thing I could for the sex—I answered at a hazard.
“He called it an elephant,” said I, “because the impression he received
of its size may have suggested that word to his mind. He may for
example have been trodden upon by one of those huge brutes—in which
case,” said I, “the impression would have been a vivid one.”
“If one of them trod on me, it wouldn’t suggest the word elephant,”
said Bellwattle. “I should think of squash.”
“Probably you would,” said Cruikshank; “but then you’re not Adam.” By
which I think he meant to convey the mental superiority of his sex.
Therefore—“She might be Eve,” said I.
Bellwattle closed one eye and looked at me.
I met her gaze steadily and then, as suddenly, she put another question
to us.
“Did Adam name everything?”
“Every single thing,” said Cruikshank.
“All the insects?”
“Every blessed one.”
“Why did he call it Daddy Long Legs, then?”
Cruikshank seized the opportunity.
“That was what its long legs suggested to him.”
“But why Daddy?” said Bellwattle very quickly.
Cruikshank dipped into his third cup of tea, drowning all possible
answer.
“Why Daddy?” she repeated.
“Because,” said I, “Adam was the father of all living.”
For the moment Cruikshank forgot his table manners and choked. It
took a great deal of serious assurance on our part then to convince
Bellwattle that we were in earnest. For we were in earnest. No man is
so serious, or so put upon his mettle as when a woman bows to him for
knowledge. There comes that look into his face as well I remember
would creep into the face of the master when I was at school. No doubt
it is the same now. The vanity of men does not alter in ten years, or
in ten thousand for that matter.
I can see now the German master—that is to say the stolid Englishman
who taught us German—I can see him now reading out a sentence for us to
translate into the language.
“My heart,” read he, most solemnly, “my heart is in the Highlands—my
heart is not here.”
And there was such pathos, such a tone of exile in his voice, that I
was prompted to ask him whether, under the circumstances, he could give
his proper attention to the class.
“Might we not shut up our books,” said I—“straight away?”
The look that came into his face then was the look—exaggerated a little
perhaps—which comes into the faces of most men when the dignity of
their great wisdom is upset. Cruikshank and I, then, were struggling
for our dignity against the fire of Bellwattle’s questions. It was no
good talking about the evolution of language to her. She would never
have understood a word of it. Now, when a man tells a woman anything
which she does not understand, she is just as likely to think him a
consummate fool. And a man will always be a fool rather than be thought
one.
We were trying, therefore, to answer Bellwattle as she would have
answered herself. In other words, we were making fools of ourselves in
order that Bellwattle should think us wise.
It was here that Cruikshank tempted providence. Doubtless he thought we
were getting on so well that we could afford to be generous with our
information, for in quite an uncalled-for way he volunteered to tell
her more.
“Is there anything else,” said he, “that you want to know?”
She nodded her head and around the corners of her lips I believe I
caught the suspicion of a smile.
“If Adam called it a cow,” she began——
“He did,” interrupted Cruikshank. “In those days it probably made that
sort of noise.”
“Then why,” said Bellwattle, giving him never a moment to retract, “why
do they call it a _vache_ in France?”
We all looked at each other—I at Cruikshank, Cruikshank at me, and
Bellwattle alternately at both of us.
After a pregnant pause, Cruikshank began to temporise.
“That’s very like a woman,” said he—“you’re going into another issue
altogether.”
“Now,” said I, “you’re coming to Bible history.”
“Yes, that’s Bible history,” repeated Cruikshank, “you’re going back
to the Tower of Babel.”
“Is that where they wanted to get up to Heaven?” she asked.
We nodded our heads emphatically.
“And it all smashed up, and they began talking like a crowd of
tourists?”
“Something like that,” we agreed.
“Then, don’t you see,” went on Cruikshank, finding his feet once more.
“Then they all separated, went into different countries, and when they
saw a cow in France they called it _vache_—it’s quite simple.”
“Oh, yes, I see that part of it,” said Bellwattle. You have only to say
to a woman—and moreover be it in the proper tone of voice—that a thing
is quite simple and she will see it through and through. I have known
Bellwattle understand a proposition of Euclid by telling her it was
quite simple.
As I say, “If that point is the centre of this circle, all lines drawn
from that point to the circumference must be equal; that’s quite
simple, isn’t it?”
And she has replied, “Oh—quite—I see that—but who says it’s the centre?”
If I say Euclid, she then asks me if I believe everything which people
tell me.
In this manner she saw Cruikshank’s point about the people in France
calling a cow _vache_. But after seeing it, she was silent for a long
time. She was giving it due consideration. I knew that another question
was to come. At last she looked up.
“But can you explain,” said she, “how they happened to hit upon the
same animal? I know _vache_ means cow, but how did the people in France
know that it should be that particular animal that they were to call
_vache_? They might have called a pig _vache_, and then we should all
have been topsy-turvy.”
I ran my fingers through my hair.
“My God!” said I——
“It’s no good swearing,” said Bellwattle, “I can see you don’t know.”
XVIII
THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED
XVIII
THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED
It comes back into my mind now, as an echo that is lost among the
hills, that night in Ardmore in Ireland, that night when they heard the
Pope was dead. I can hear the low, deep note of the sea, monotonous
and even as the beating of a heavy drum when the waves rolled up the
boat cove, or leapt upon the rocks that crouch to meet the sea beneath
the Holy Well. I can see the clouds, great banks of grey, as though a
furnace were smouldering below the horizon, I can see them hanging in
sullen wet masses, hanging low over the white crests that were breaking
away by Helvic Head. I can see the dank, dark coils of seaweed lying,
like the hair of women that are drowned, along the dim curved line of
the strand. And around the first head, where the bay spreads wide into
the great Atlantic, the sound of a rushing wind, muted by the hills,
dimly reaches my ears.
It seems fitting that when any great catastrophe falls upon the
trembling little people of this world there should be sounded an
ominous note—a discord struck upon that great orchestra of the
elements. It is the only true accompaniment to the sorrows of mankind,
when the thunder bursts, the lightning rends the raiment of the sky and
the winds play wildly on their shrillest instruments.
There was no thunder, no lightning that night, but all across the bay
and round the headlands you might have felt the despairing sense of
foreboding, the heavy hour before a storm, when the very ground seems
angry beneath your feet.
Such was the night in Ardmore when they heard the Pope was dead.
In one moment the whole Roman Catholic world had been robbed of its
father; the great Church of Christ was without its head on earth. From
that moment and for the anxious days to come they were as orphans,
knowing not where to turn. The Pope was dead. But there was none to cry
in the market-place, there was none to stand upon the chapel steps and
shout, “Long live the Pope!”
The Pope was dead. There was no Pope.
You must have seen the silent, questioning faces to have known what
such a loss could mean. Around the counters in the public-houses the
fishermen sat, afraid to drink. The women crept into their cottages and
shut the doors. Presently little flickers of light glowed from each
window—candle flames trembling as the draughts of wind caught their
feeble glow.
It was as though the spirit of that old aristocrat, with his death-like
head and piercing eyes, were making its way to Heaven through the
little street of Ardmore, and these few feeble glimmers were set out,
tiny beacons, to point his road.
For an hour they were burning before there came from the village
courthouse the sounds of instruments being blown, all those weird,
unearthly noises which tell you that a village band is about to play.
In ten minutes they were ready—the public-houses were empty. In ten
minutes they were putting their instruments to their lips; their cheeks
were swelling with the first ready breath to start. A little crowd of
boys and girls were surrounding them ready to march by their sides; and
then, with a one—two—three, they began. The little solemn, serious
crowd strode forth.
Up by the post-office they went, round by the Protestant Church, along
down Coffee Lane to where stands the seawall hung with its festoons of
red-brown nets. Then through the main street they marched and round
again the same route as before.
And ever as they marched, like the band of an army playing the death
march at the funeral of their chief, they played the same grim tune—the
grimmest tune at such a time I think I have ever heard—“Good-bye,
Dolly, I must leave you.” It was the only tune they knew.
After the second round of their journey, the playing ceased while
the players gained their breath. In silence then, they tramped over
the same ground, the little crowd, eager for the music again, still
following at their heels.