One day I was discussing with Mrs. Abel the oft-recurrent problem of
Snarley's peculiar mental constitution, a subject to which she had given
the name "Snarleychology."[2] Her knowledge of the old man's ways was of
longer date than mine, and she understood him infinitely better than I.
"Suppose, now," I said "that Snarley had been able to express himself
after the manner of superlative people like you and me, what would have
come of it?" "Art," said Mrs. Abel, "and most probably poetry. He's just
a mass of intuitions!" "What a pity they are inarticulate!" I answered,
repeating the appropriate commonplace. "But they are not inarticulate,"
said Mrs. Abel. "Snarley has found a medium of expression which gives
him perfect satisfaction." "Then the poems ought to be in existence,"
said I. "So they are," was the answer; "they exist in the shape of
Farmer Perryman's big rams. The rams are the direct creations of genius
working upon appropriate material. None but a dreamer of dreams could
have brought them into being; every one of them is an embodied ideal.
Don't make the blunder of thinking that Snarley's sheep-raising has
nothing to do with his star-gazings and spirit-rappings. It's all one.
Shakespeare writes _Hamlet_, and Snarley produces 'Thunderbolt.'[3] To
call Snarley inarticulate because he hasn't written a _Hamlet_ is as
absurd as it would be to call Shakespeare inarticulate because he didn't
produce a 'Thunderbolt.' Both _Hamlet_ and 'Thunderbolt' were born in
the highest heaven of invention. Both are the fruit of intuitions
concentrated on their object with incredible pertinacity."
[Footnote 2: I suggested to Mrs. Abel that this word wouldn't do, and
proposed "Snarleyology" instead. She declined the improvement at once,
remarking that 'the soul of the word was in the _ch_.']
[Footnote 3: The name of the greatest of the Perryman rams--a brute
"with more decorations than a Field-marshal."]
I was forced into silence for a time, bewildered by a statement which
seemed to alternate between levelling the big things down to the little
ones, and raising the little ones to the level of the big. When I had
chewed this hard saying as well as I could, I bolted it for further
digestion, and continued the conversation. "Has Snarley," I asked, "ever
been tried with poetry, in the ordinary sense of the term?"
"Yes," said the lady, "an experiment was once made on him by Miss ----"
(naming a literary counterpart to Lady Lottie Passingham), "who visited
him in his cottage and insisted on reading him some poem of Whittier's.
In ten minutes she was fleeing from the cottage in terror of her life,
and no one has since repeated the experiment."
"I think," I said, "that if you would consent to be the experimenter we
might obtain better results."
Now in one important respect Nature had dealt more bountifully with Mrs.
Abel than with Lady Lottie Passingham. Though Mrs. Abel had no desire to
reform the universe, and was conscious of no mission to that end, she
possessed a voice which might have produced a revolution. It was a soft
contralto, vibrant and rich, and tremulous with tones which the gods
would have come from Olympus to hear. She never sang, but her speech was
music, rich and rare. In early life, as I have said, she had been on the
stage, and Art had completed the gifts of Nature. Here lay one of the
secrets of her power over the soul of Snarley Bob. Her voice was
hypnotic with all men, and Snarley yielded to it as to a spell.
Another point which has its bearing on this, and also on what has to
follow, is that Snarley had a passionate love for the song of the
nightingale. The birds haunted the district in great numbers, and the
time of their singing was the time when Snarley "let out his line" to
its furthest limits. His love of the nightingale was coupled, strangely
enough, with a hatred equally intense for the cuckoo. To the song of the
cuckoo in early spring he was fairly tolerant; but in June, when, as
everybody knows, "she changeth her tune," Snarley's rage broke forth
into bitter persecution. He had invented a method of his own, which I
shall not divulge, for snaring these birds; and whenever he caught them
he promptly wrung their necks. For the same reason he would have been
not unwilling to wring the necks of Lady Lottie Passingham and of the
Literary Counterpart had they continued to pester him.
Here then were the conditions from which we drew the materials for our
conspiracy. Mrs. Abel, though at first reluctant, consented at last to
play the active part in a new piece of experimental Snarleychology. It
was determined that we would try our subject with poetry, and also that
we would try him with "something big." For a long time we discussed what
this something "big" was to be. Choice nearly fell on "A Grammarian's
Funeral," but I am glad this was not adopted; for, though it represented
very well our own views of Snarley Bob, I doubt if it would have
appealed directly to the subject himself. At length one of us suggested
Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," to which the other immediately replied,
"Why didn't we think of that before?" It was the very thing.
But how were we to proceed? We knew very well that a deliberately
planned attempt to "read something" to Snarley was sure to fail. He
would suspect that we were "interested in him" in the way he always
resented, or that we wanted to improve his mind, which was also a thing
he could not bear. Still, we might practice a little artful deception.
We might meet him together by accident in the quarry, as we had done
before; and Mrs. Abel, after due preliminaries and a little leading-on
about nightingales, might produce the volume from her pocket and read
the poem. So it was arranged. But I think we parted that night with a
feeling that we were going to do something ridiculous, and Mr. Abel told
me quite frankly that we were a pair of precious fools.
One lovely morning about the middle of April the desired meeting in the
quarry was duly brought off. The lambing season was almost over, and
Snarley was occupied in looking after a few belated ewes. We arrived, of
course, separately; but there must have been something in our manner
which put Snarley on his guard. He looked at us in turn with glances
which plainly told that he suspected a planned attack on the isolation
of his soul. Presently he lapsed into his most disagreeable manner, and
his horse-like face began to wear a singularly brutal expression. It was
one of his bad days; for some time he had evidently been "stuck in his
skin," and probably intended to end his incarceration that very night by
getting drunk. He was, in fact, determined to drive us away, and, though
the presence of Mrs. Abel disarmed him of his worst insolence, he
managed to become sufficiently unpleasant to make us both devoutly wish
we were at the bottom of the hill. I shudder to think what would have
happened in these circumstances to Lady Lottie Passingham or to the
Literary Counterpart.
The thing, however, had cost too much trouble to be lightly abandoned,
and we did not relish the prospect of being greeted by peals of laughter
if we returned defeated to the Rectory. In desperation, therefore, Mrs.
Abel began to force the issue. "I'm told the nightingale was heard in
the Rectory grounds last night, Snarley." "Nightingales be blowed,"
replied the Subject. "I've no time to listen if there was a hundred
singin'. I've been up with these blessed ewes three nights without a
wink o' sleep, and we've lost two lambs as were got by 'Thunderbolt.'"
"Well, some time, when you are not quite so busy, I want you to hear
what a great man has written about the nightingale," said Mrs. Abel. She
spoke in a rather forced voice, which suggested the persuasive tones of
the village curate when addressing a church-full of naughty children at
the afternoon service.
"_I_ don't want to hear it," said Snarley, whose suspicions were now
raised to certitude, "and, what's more, I _won't_ hear it. What's the
good? If anybody's been talkin' about nightingales, it's sure to be
rubbish. Nightingales is things you can't talk about, but only listen
to. No, thank you, my lady. When I wants nightingales, I'll go and hear
'em. I don't want to know what nobody had said about 'em. Besides, I've
too much to think about with these 'ere ewes. There's one lyin' dead
behind them stones as I've got to bury. She died last night;" and he
began to ply us with disgusting details about the premature confinement
of a sheep.
It was all over. Mrs. Abel remounted her horse, and presently rode down
the hill. When she had gone fifty yards or so, she took a little
calf-bound volume of Keats from her pocket and held it aloft. The signal
was not difficult to read. "Yes," it said, "we _are_ a pair of precious
fools."
* * * * *
Five months elapsed, during which I neither saw nor much desired to see
Mrs. Abel. The harvest was now gathered, and the event was to be
celebrated by a "harvest home" in the Perrymans' big barn. They were
kind enough to send me the usual invitation, which I accepted "with
pleasure"--a phrase in which, for once in my frequent use of it, I spoke
the truth. The prospect of going down to Deadborough served, of course,
to revive the painful memory of our humiliating defeat. Looked at in the
perspective of time, our enterprise stood out in all its essential
folly. But I have frequently found that the contemplation of a past
mistake has a strange tendency to cause its repetition; and it was so in
this case. For it suddenly occurred to me that this "harvest home" might
give us an opportunity for a flank attack on the soul of Snarley Bob,
whereby we might retrieve the disaster of our frontal operations on
Quarry Hill. I lost no time in divulging my plan in the proper quarters.
Mrs. Abel replied exactly as Lambert did when Cromwell, "walking in the
garden of Brocksmouth House," told him of that sudden bright idea for
rolling up the Scottish army at Dunbar--"She had meant to say the same
thing." The plan was simple enough; but had its execution rested with
any other person than Mrs. Abel--with the Literary Counterpart, for
example--it would have miscarried as completely as its fore-runner.
The company assembled in the Perrymans' barn consisted of the labouring
population of three large farms, men and women, all dressed in their
Sunday best. To these were added, as privileged outsiders, his Reverence
and Mrs. Abel, the popular stationmaster of Deadborough, Tom Barter--who
supplied the victuals--and myself. Good meat, of course, was in
abundance, and good drink also--the understanding with regard to the
latter being that, though you might go the length of getting "pretty
lively," you must stop short of getting drunk.
The proceedings commenced in comparative silence, the rustics
communicating with one another only by such whispers as might be
perpetrated in church. But this did not last very long. From the moment
the first turn was given to the tap in the cider-barrel, the attentive
observer might have detected a rapid crescendo of human voices, which
rose into a roar long before the end of the feast. When all had eaten
their fill, songs were called for, and "Master" Perryman, of course, led
off with "The Farmer's Boy."
Others followed. I was struck by the fact that nearly all the songs were
of an extremely melancholy nature--the chief objects celebrated by the
Muse being withered flowers, little coffins, the corpses of sweethearts,
last farewells, and hopeless partings on the lonely shore. Tears flow;
ladies sigh; voices choke; hearts break; children die; lovers prove
untrue. It was tragic, and I confess I could have wept myself--not at
the songs, for they were stupid enough,--but to think of the grey
lugubrious life whose keynote was all too truly struck by this morbid,
melancholy stuff.
Tom Barter, who had been in the army, and was just convalescent from a
bad turn of _delirium tremens_, sang a song about a dying soldier,
visited on his gory bed by a succession of white-robed spirits,
including his little sister, his aged mother, and a young female with a
babe, whom the dying hero appeared to have treated none too well.
The song was vigorously encored, and Tom at once responded with a
second--and I have no doubt, genuine--barrack-room ballad. The hero of
this ditty is a "Lancer bold." He is duly wetted with tears before his
departure for the wars; but is cheered up at the last moment by the
lady's assurance that she will meet him on his return in "a carriage
gay." Arrived at the front, he performs the usual prodigies: slashes his
way through the smoke, spikes the enemy's guns, and spears
"Afghanistan's chieftains" right and left. He then returns to England,
dreaming of wedding bells, and we next see him on the deck of a
troop-ship, scanning the expectant throng on the shore and asking
himself, "Where, oh where, is that carriage gay?" Of course, it isn't
there, and the disconsolate Lancer at once repairs to the "smiling"
village whence the lady had intended to issue in the carriage. Here he
is met by "a jet-black hearse with nodding plumes," seeks information
from the weeping bystanders, and has his worst suspicions confirmed. He
compares the gloomy vehicle before him with the "carriage gay" of his
dreams, and, having sufficiently elaborated the contrast, resolves to
end his blighted existence on the lady's grave. How he spends the next
interval is not told; but towards midnight we find him in the churchyard
with his "trusty" weapon in his hand. This, in keeping with the unities,
should have been a lance; but apparently the Lancer was armed on some
mixed principle known to the War Office, and allowed to take his pick of
weapons before going on leave; for presently a shot rings out, and one
of England's stoutest champions is no more.
During the singing of this song I noticed a poorly clad girl, with a
sweet, intelligent face, put a handkerchief to her mouth and stifle a
sob. She quietly made her way towards the barn door, and presently
slipped out into the night.
The thing had not escaped the notice of Snarley Bob, and I could see
wrath in his eyes. Being near him, I asked what it meant. "By God!" he
said, "it's a good job for Tom Barter as the rheumatiz has crippled my
old hands. If I could only double my fist, I'd put a mark on his silly
jaw as 'ud stop him singing that song for many a day to come. Not that
there's any sense in it. But it's just because there's no sense in 'em
that such songs oughtn't to be sung. See that young woman go out just
now? Well, she's in a decline, and knows as she can't last very long.
And she's got a young man in India--in the same battery as our Bill--as
nice and straight a lad as ever you see."
Another song was called "Fallen Leaves," the singer being a son of Peter
Shott, the local preacher--a young man of dissipated appearance, with a
white face and an excellent tenor voice. This song, of course, was a
disquisition on the evanescence of all things here below. Each verse
began "I saw," and ended with the refrain:
"Fallen leaves, fallen leaves!
With woe untold my bosom heaves,
Fallen leaves, fallen leaves!"
"I saw," said the song, a mixed assortment of decaying glories--among
them, a pair of lovers on a seat, a Christmas family party, a rosebush,
a railway accident on Bank Holiday, a rake's deathbed, a battlefield, an
oak tree in its pride, and the same oak in process of being converted by
an undertaker into a coffin for the poet's only friend. All these and
many more the poet "saw" and buried in his fallen leaves, assuring the
world that his bosom heaved with woe untold for every one of them.
Tom Barter, who was the leading emotionalist in the parish, was visibly
affected, his bosom heaving in a manner which the poet himself could not
have excelled; while his poor anaemic wife, who had hesitated about
coming to the feast because her eye was still discoloured from the blow
Tom had given her last week, feebly expressed the hope "that it would do
him good."
So it went on. Whatever jocund rebecks may have sounded in the England
of long ago, their strains found no echo in the funeral ditties of the
Perrymans' feast.
Snarley Bob, in whom the drink had kindled some hankering for eternal
splendours, was well content with the singing of "The Farmer's Boy," and
joined in the chorus with the remnants of a once mighty voice. After
that he became restless and increasingly snappish; his face darkened at
"Fallen Leaves," and he began to look positively dangerous when a young
man who was a railway porter in town, now home for a holiday, made a
ghastly attempt at merriment by singing a low-class music-hall catch.
What he would have done or said I do not know, for at that moment the
announcement was made which the reader has been expecting--that Mrs.
Abel would give a recitation.
"Now," said Snarley to his neighbour, "we shall have summat like." His
whole being sprang to attention. He rapidly knocked out the ashes of his
pipe, refilled, and lit; and, folding his arms before him on the table,
leant forward to listen. For my part, I took a convenient station where
I could watch Snarley, as Hamlet watched the king in the play. He was
far too intent on Mrs. Abel to notice me.
The barn was dimly lighted, and the speaker, standing far back from the
end of the table, was in deep shadow and almost invisible. Has the
reader ever heard a voice which trembles with emotions gathered up from
countless generations of human experience--a voice in which the memories
of ages, the designs of Nature, the woes and triumphs of evolving worlds
become articulate; a voice that speaks a language not of words, but of
things, transmuting the eternal laws to tones, and pouring into the soul
by their means a stream of solicitations to the secret springs of the
buried life? Such voices there are: Wordsworth heard one of them in the
song of "The Solitary Reaper." In such a voice, rolling forth from the
shadows, and in exquisite articulation, there came to us these words:
"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness steals my sense,
As though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains,
One minute past, and Lethewards had sunk."
The noisy crew were hushed: silence fell like a palpable thing. Snarley
Bob shifted his position: he raised his arms from the table, grasped his
chin with his right hand; with his left he took the pipe from his mouth,
and pointed its stem at the speaker; his features relaxed, and then
fixed into the immobility of the worshipping saint.
Observation was difficult; for I, too, was half hypnotised by the voice
from the shadows; but what I remember I will tell.
The voice has now finished the second verse, and is entering the third,
the note slightly raised, and with a tone like that of a wailing wind:
"That I might drink and leave the world unseen,
And, with thee, fade away into the forest dim.
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known."
Snarley Bob rises erect in his place, still holding his chin with his
right hand, and with the left pointing his pipe, as before, at the
speaker. The rigid arm is trembling violently, and Snarley, with
half-open mouth, is drawing his breath in gulps. Someone, his wife I
think, tries to make him sit down. He detaches his right hand, and
violently thrusts her away.
For some minutes he remains in this attitude. The verse:
"Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird,"
is now reached, and I can see that violent tremors are passing through
Snarley's frame. His head has sunk towards his breast, and is shaking;
his right arm has fallen to his side, the fingers hooked as though he
would clench his fist. Thus he stands, his head jerking now and then
into an upright position, and shaking more and more. He has ceased to
point at the speaker; the pipe is on the table. Thus to the end.
Somebody claps; another feebly knocks his glass on the board; there is a
general whisper of "Hush!" Snarley Bob has sunk on to the bench; he
folds his arms on the table, rests his head upon them as a tired man
would do; a tremor shakes him once or twice; then he closes his eyes,
and is still. He has apparently fallen asleep.
No one, save myself, has paid much attention to Snarley, who is at the
end of the room furthest from Mrs. Abel. But now his attitude is
noticed, and somebody says, "Hullo, Snarley's had a drop too much this
time. Give him a shake-up, missis."
The "shake-up," however, is not needed. For Snarley, after a few minutes
of apparent sleep, raises his head, looks round him, and again stands
upright. A flood of incoherencies, spoken in a high-pitched, whining
voice, pours from his lips. Now and then comes a clear sentence, mingled
with fragments of the poem--these in a startling reproduction of Mrs.
Abel's tones--thus: "The gentleman's callin' for drink. Why don't they
bring him drink? Here, young woman, bring him a pint o' ale, and put
three-ha'porth of gin in it--the door's openin', and he's goin' through.
He'll soon be there--
"'Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known.'
All right--it's bloomin' well all right--don't give him any more.
"'Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.'
--It's the Passing Bell.--What are they ringing it for?--He's not
dead--he'll come back again when he's ready.--Stop 'em ringing that
bell!
"'Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self.'
All right--he's comin' back.--Nightingales!--Who wants to hear about a
lot o' bloomin' nightingales. _I_ don't. _I'm_ all right--get me a cup
o' tea.--It's Tom Barter who's drunk, not me!
"'Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow.'
The mail goes o' Fridays--K Battery, Peshawur, Punjaub--O my God, let
Bill tell him!--Shut up, you blasted old fool, or I'll knock yer silly
head off! _You'll_ never get there!--What do _you_ know about
nightingales? I heard 'em singin' for hundreds and thousands of years
before _you_ were born:
"'Thou was not born for death, immortal bird,
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I heard this passing night was heard
In ancient days, by Emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same voice that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn,
The same that ofttimes hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.'"
The whole of this verse was a reproduction of Mrs. Abel's rendering,
spoken in a voice not unlike hers, and with scarcely the falter of a
syllable. It was followed by a few seconds of incoherent babble, at the
end of which tremors again broke out over Snarley's body; he swayed to
and fro, and his head fell forward on his chest. "Catch hold of him, or
he'll fall," cried somebody. Then a medley of voices--"Give him a drop
of brandy!" "No, don't you see he's dead drunk a'ready?" "Drunk! not
'im. Do you think he could imitate Mrs. Abel like that if he was drunk?"
"Take them gels out o' the barn as quick as you can!" "If she don't stop
shriekin' when you get 'er home, throw a bucket o' cold water over her.
It's only 'isterics." "Well, I've seed a lot o' queer things in my time,
and I've knowed Snarley to do some rum tricks, but I never seed nowt
like _that_." "Oh dear, sir, I never felt so upset in all my life. It
isn't _right_! Somebody ought to ha' stopped 'im. I wonder Mr. Abel
didn't interfere." "That there poem o' Mrs. Abel's was a'most too much
for me. But to think o' _him_ gettin' up like that! It must be Satan
that's got into him." "It's a awful thing to 'ave a man like that livin'
in the next cottage to your own. I'll be frightened out o' my wits when
my master's not at 'ome." "They ought to _do_ something to 'im--I've
said so many a time."
And then the voice of Snarley's wife as she chafed her husband's hands:
"No, sir, don't you believe 'em when they say he's drunk. He's only had
two glasses of cider and half a glass o' beer. You can see the other
half in his glass now. I counted 'em myself. And it takes quarts to make
'im tipsy. It's a sort of trance, sir, as he's had. I've knowed him like
this two or three times before. He was _just_ like it after he'd been to
hear Sir Robert Ball on the stars, sir--worse, if anythin'. He's gettin'
better now; but I'm afraid he'll be terrible upset."
Snarley had opened his eyes, and was looking vacantly and sleepily round
him. "I'll go home," was all he said. He got up and walked rather
shakily, but without assistance, out of the barn.
A few minutes later Mrs. Abel came up to me. "We were fools five months
ago," she said; "but what are we now?"
"Criminals, most likely," I replied.
"And if you do it again, you'll be murderers," said Mr. Abel, in a tone
of severity.