official doubtless, congratulating the public that the number relieved
under the new regulations has dropped from, say, six hundred to a
hundred and fifty. And what, oh blindest of the blind, do you imagine
has become of the remaining four hundred and fifty? Has your precious
folly extinguished them? Are they dead? No, indeed. All over the
country, hydraulic pressure, in the name of science, progress,
temperance, and similar perverted things, is being put on the
gunpowder--or the dynamite, if you like--of society. Every now and then
some individual member of the Army of Wretches turns and becomes the
Devil of modern civilisation. Modern civilisation has put out the
spiritual Devil and produced the Demon of Dynamite. Let me raise a
voice, in pleading for more humane treatment of the poor--the only way,
believe me, by which society can narrow down and confine the operations
of this new Devil. A human being is not a dog, yet is treated worse
than a dog.
Force these human dogs to learn to read with empty stomachs--stomachs
craving for a piece of bread while education is crammed into them. In
manhood, if unfortunate, set them to break stones. If imbecility
supervene give them bread and water. In helpless age give them the cup
of cold water. This is the way to breed dynamite. And then at the other
end of the scale let your Thames Embankment Boulevard be the domain of
the street rough; let your Islington streets be swept by bands of
brutes; let the well dressed be afraid to venture anywhere unless in
the glare of gas and electric light! Manufacture it in one district,
and give it free scope and play in another. Yet never was there an age
in which the mass of society, from the titled to the cottager, was so
full of real and true humanity, so ready to start forward to help, so
imbued with the highest sentiments. The wrong is done in official
circles. No steel-clad baron of Norman days, no ruthless red-stockinged
cardinal, with the Bastile in one hand and the tumbril in the other,
ever ruled with so total an absence of Heart as the modern "official,"
the Tyrants of the nineteenth century; whose rods are hobbies in the
name of science miscalled, in the name of temperance perverted, in the
name of progress backwards, in the name of education without food. It
is time that the common-sense of society at large rose in revolution
against it. Meantime dynamite.
This is a long digression: suppose while you have been reading it that
Mr. Roberts has passed one of the two terrible nights, his faithful
Bill at one end of the rickyard and himself at the other. The second
night they took up their positions in the same manner as soon as it was
dark. There was no moon, and the sky was overcast with those stationary
clouds which often precede a great storm, so that the darkness was
marked, and after they had parted a step or two they lost sight of each
other. Worn with long wakefulness, and hard labour during the day, they
both dropped asleep at their posts. Mr. Roberts awoke from the dead
vacancy of sleep to the sensation of a flash of light crossing his
eyelids, and to catch a glimpse of a man's neck with a red necktie
illuminated by flame like a Rembrandt head in the centre of shadow. He
leaped forward literally yelling--the incendiary he wholly forgot--his
rick! his rick! He beat the side of the rick with his stick, and as it
had but just caught he beat the flame out. Then he dropped senseless on
the ground. Bill, awakened by Roberts' awful yell or shriek of
excitement, started to his feet, heard a man rushing by in the
darkness, and hurled his heavy stick in that direction. By the thud
which followed and a curse, he knew it had hit the object, but not with
sufficient force to bring the scoundrel down. The fellow escaped; Bill
went to his master and lifted him up; how he got Roberts home he did
not know, but it was hours before Roberts could speak. Towards sunrise
he recovered, and would go immediately to assure himself that the ricks
were safe. Then they found a man's hat--Bill's stick had knocked it
off--and by that hat and the red necktie the incendiary was brought to
justice. The hat was big Mat's; he always wore a red necktie.
Big Mat made no defence; he was simply stolidly indifferent to the
whole proceedings. The only statement he made was that he had not fired
four of the ricks, and he did not know who had done so. Example is
contagious; some one had followed the dynamite lead, detection never
took place, but the fires ceased. Mat, of course, went for the longest
period of penal servitude the law allotted. I should say that he did
not himself know why he did it. That intense, brooding moroseness, that
wormwood hatred, does not often understand itself. So much the more
dangerous is it; no argument, no softening influence can reach it.
Faithful Bill, who had served Mr. Roberts almost all his life, and who
probably would have served him till the end, received a money reward
from the insurance office for his share in detecting the incendiary.
This reward ruined him--killed him. Golden sovereigns in his pocket
destroyed him. He went on the drink; he drank, and was enticed to
drink, till in six weeks he died in the infirmary of the workhouse.
Mat being in the convict prison, and Dolly near to another confinement,
she could not support herself; she was driven to the same workhouse in
which her brother had but just died. I am not sure, but believe that
pseudo-science, the Torturer of these days, denied her the least drop
of alcohol during her travail. If it did permit one drop, then was the
Torturer false to his creed. Dolly survived, but utterly broken,
hollow-chested, a workhouse fixture. Still, so long as she could stand
she had to wash in the laundry; weak as she was, they weakened her
still further with steam and heat, and labour. Washing is hard work for
those who enjoy health and vigour. To a girl, broken in heart and body,
it is a slow destroyer. Heat relaxes all the fibres; Dolly's required
bracing. Steam will soften wood and enable the artificer to bend it to
any shape. Dolly's chest became yet more hollow; her cheek-bones
prominent; she bent to the steam. This was the girl who had lingered in
the lane to help the boy pick watercress, to gather a flower, to listen
to a thrush, to bask in the sunshine. Open air and green fields were to
her life itself. Heart miseries are always better borne in the open
air. How just, how truly scientific, to shut her in a steaming
wash-house!
The workhouse was situated in a lovely spot, on the lowest slope of
hills, hills covered afar with woods. Meads at hand, corn-fields
farther away, then green slopes over which broad cloud-shadows glided
slowly. The larks sang in spring, in summer the wheat was golden, in
autumn the distant woods were brown and red and yellow. Had you spent
your youth in those fields, had your little drama of life been enacted
in them, do you not think that you would like at least to gaze out at
them from the windows of your prison? It was observed that the
miserable wretches were always looking out of the windows in this
direction. The windows on that side were accordingly built up and
bricked in that they might not look out.
BITS OF OAK BARK
I
THE ACORN-GATHERER
Black rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep at the foot of the
tree. His head was lying on a bulging root close to the stem: his feet
reached to a small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber his
forehead frowned--they were fixed lines, like the grooves in the oak
bark. There was nothing else in his features attractive or repellent:
they were such as might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The
set angry frown was the only distinguishing mark--like the dents on a
penny made by a hobnail boot, by which it can be known from twenty
otherwise precisely similar. His clothes were little better than
sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would have said, "Poor,
but carefully tended." A kind heart might have put a threepenny-bit in
his clenched little fist, and sighed. But that iron set frown on the
young brow would not have unbent even for the silver. Caw! Caw!
The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is
not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there
and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end
of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn
drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel
or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and
do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one
flies with it as if it were a nugget in his beak, out to some open spot
of ground, followed by a general Caw!
This was going on above while the boy slept below. A thrush looked out
from the hedge, and among the short grass there was still the hum of
bees, constant sun-worshippers as they are. The sunshine gleamed on the
rooks' black feathers overhead, and on the sward sparkled from
hawkweed, some lotus and yellow weed, as from a faint ripple of water.
The oak was near a corner formed by two hedges, and in the angle was a
narrow thorny gap. Presently an old woman, very upright, came through
this gap carrying a faggot on her shoulder and a stout ash stick in her
hand. She was very clean, well dressed for a labouring woman, hard of
feature, but superior in some scarcely defined way to most of her
class. The upright carriage had something to do with it, the firm
mouth, the light blue eyes that looked every one straight in the face.
Possibly these, however, had less effect than her conscious
righteousness. Her religion lifted her above the rest, and I do assure
you that it was perfectly genuine. That hard face and cotton gown would
have gone to the stake.
When she had got through the gap she put the faggot down in it, walked
a short distance out into the field, and came back towards the boy,
keeping him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw!
Thwack, thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily
enough to have broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let
loose, without a second of dubious awakening and without a cry, he
darted straight for the gap in the corner. There the faggot stopped
him, and before he could tear it away the old woman had him again,
thwack, thwack, and one last stinging slash across his legs as he
doubled past her. Quick as the wind as he rushed he picked up the bag
of acorns and pitched it into the mound, where the acorns rolled down
into a pond and were lost--a good round shilling's worth. Then across
the field without his cap, over the rising ground, and out of sight.
The old woman made no attempt to hold him, knowing from previous
experience that it was useless, and would probably result in her own
overthrow. The faggot, brought a quarter of a mile for the purpose,
enabled her, you see, to get two good chances at him.
A wickeder boy never lived: nothing could be done with the reprobate.
He was her grandson--at least, the son of her daughter, for he was not
legitimate. The man drank, the girl died, as was believed, of sheer
starvation: the granny kept the child, and he was now between ten and
eleven years old. She had done and did her duty, as she understood it.
A prayer-meeting was held in her cottage twice a week, she prayed
herself aloud among them, she was a leading member of the sect. Neither
example, precept, nor the rod could change that boy's heart. In time
perhaps she got to beat him from habit rather than from any particular
anger of the moment, just as she fetched water and filled her kettle,
as one of the ordinary events of the day. Why did not the father
interfere? Because if so he would have had to keep his son: so many
shillings a week the less for ale.
In the garden attached to the cottage there was a small shed with a
padlock, used to store produce or wood in. One morning, after a severe
beating, she drove the boy in there and locked him in the whole day
without food. It was no use, he was as hardened as ever.
A footpath which crossed the field went by the cottage, and every
Sunday those who were walking to church could see the boy in the window
with granny's Bible open before him. There he had to sit, the door
locked, under terror of stick, and study the page. What was the use of
compelling him to do that? He could not read. "No," said the old woman,
"he won't read, but I makes him look at his book."
The thwacking went on for some time, when one day the boy was sent on
an errand two or three miles, and for a wonder started willingly
enough. At night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next, and
it was as clear as possible that he had run away. No one thought of
tracking his footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which
passed a railway, brooks, and a canal. He had run away, and he might
stop away: it was beautiful summer weather, and it would do him no harm
to stop out for a week. A dealer who had business in a field by the
canal thought indeed that he saw something in the water, but he did not
want any trouble, nor indeed did he know that some one was missing.
Most likely a dead dog; so he turned his back and went to look again at
the cow he thought of buying. A barge came by, and the steerswoman,
with a pipe in her mouth, saw something roll over and come up under the
rudder: the length of the barge having passed over it. She knew what it
was, but she wanted to reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart
of ale. No use picking it up, only make a mess on deck, there was no
reward--"Gee-up! Neddy." The barge went on, turning up the mud in the
shallow water, sending ripples washing up to the grassy meadow shores,
while the moorhens hid in the flags till it was gone. In time a
labourer walking on the towing-path saw "it," and fished it out, and
with it a slender ash sapling, with twine and hook, a worm still on it.
This was why the dead boy had gone so willingly, thinking to fish in
the "river," as he called the canal. When his feet slipped and he fell
in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs,
else most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep.
This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for
the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy had been talked to,
and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead, and that is all.
As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done her duty.
II
THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY
A great beech tree with a white mark some way up the trunk stood in the
mound by a gate which opened into a lane. Strangers coming down the
lane in the dusk often hesitated before they approached this beech. The
white mark looked like a ghostly figure emerging from the dark hedge
and the shadow of the tree. The trunk itself was of the same hue at
that hour as the bushes, so that the whiteness seemed to stand out
unsupported. So perfect was the illusion that even those who knew the
spot well, walking or riding past and not thinking about it, started as
it suddenly came into sight. Ploughboys used to throw flints at it, as
if the sound of the stone striking the tree assured them that it was
really material. Some lichen was apparently the cause of this
whiteness: the great beech indeed was known to be decaying and was
dotted with knot-holes high above. The gate was rather low, so that any
one could lean with arms over the top bar.
At one time a lady used to be very frequently seen just inside the
gate, generally without a hat, for the homestead was close by.
Sometimes a horse, saddled and bridled, but without his rider, was
observed to be fastened to the gate, and country people, being
singularly curious and inquisitive, if they chanced to go by always
peered through every opening in the hedge till they had discerned where
the pair were walking among the cowslips. More often a spaniel betrayed
them, especially in the evening, for while the courting was proceeding
he amused himself digging with his paws at the rabbit-holes in the
mound. The folk returning to their cottages at even smiled and looked
meaningly at each other if they heard a peculiarly long and shrill
whistle, which was known to every one as Luke's signal. Some said that
it was heard every evening: no matter how far Luke had to ride in the
day, his whistle was sure to be heard towards dusk. Luke was a
timber-dealer, or merchant, a calling that generally leads to
substantial profit as wealth is understood in country places. He bought
up likely timber all over the neighbourhood: he had wharves on the
canal, and yards by the little railway station miles away. He often
went up to "Lunnon," but if it was ninety miles, he was sure to be back
in time to whistle. If he was not too busy the whistle used to go twice
a day, for when he started off in the morning, no matter where he had
to go to, that lane was the road to it. The lane led everywhere.
Up in the great beech about eleven o'clock on spring mornings there was
always a wood-pigeon. The wood-pigeon is a contemplative sort of bird,
and pauses now and then during the day to consider over his labours in
filling his crop. He came again about half-past four, but it was at
eleven that his visit to the beech was usually noticed. From the window
in the lady's own room the beech and the gate could be seen, and as
that was often Luke's time she frequently sat upstairs with the window
open listening for the sound of hoofs, or the well-known whistle. She
saw the wood-pigeon on so many occasions that at last she grew to watch
for the bird, and when he went up into the tree, put down her work or
her book and walked out that way. Secure in the top of the great beech,
and conscious that it was spring, when guns are laid aside, the
wood-pigeon took no heed of her. There is nothing so pleasant to stroll
among as cowslips. This mead was full of them, so much so that a little
way in front the surface seemed yellow. They had all short stalks; this
is always the case where these flowers grow very thickly, and the bells
were a pale and somewhat lemon colour. The great cowslips with deep
yellow and marked spots grow by themselves in bunches in corners or on
the banks of brooks. Here a man might have mown acres of cowslips, pale
but sweet. Out of their cups the bees hummed as she walked amongst
them, a closed book in her hand, dreaming. She generally returned with
Luke's spaniel beside her, for whether his master came or not the
knowing dog rarely missed his visit, aware that there was always
something good for him.
One morning she went dreaming on like this through the cowslips, past
the old beech and the gate, and along by the nut-tree hedge. It was
very sunny and warm, and the birds sang with all their might, for there
had been a shower at dawn, which always set their hearts atune. At
least eight or nine of them were singing at once, thrush and blackbird,
cuckoo (afar off), dove, and greenfinch, nightingale, robin and loud
wren, and larks in the sky. But, unlike all other music, though each
had a different voice and the notes crossed and interfered with each
other, yet they did not jangle, but produced the sweetest sounds. The
more of them that sang together, the sweeter the music. It is true they
all had one thought of love at heart, and that perhaps brought about
the concord. She did not expect to see Luke that morning, knowing that
he had to get some felled trees removed from a field, the farmer
wishing them taken away before the mowing-grass grew too high, and as
the spot was ten or twelve miles distant he had to start early. Not
being so much on the alert, she fell deeper perhaps into reverie, which
lasted till she reached the other side of the field, when the spaniel
rushed out of the hedge and leaped up to be noticed, quite startling
her. At the same moment she thought she heard the noise of hoofs in the
lane--it might be Luke--and immediately afterwards there came his long,
shrill, and peculiar whistle from the gate under the beech. She ran as
fast as she could, the spaniel barking beside her, and was at the gate
in two or three minutes, but Luke was not there. Nor was he anywhere in
the lane--she could see up and down it over the low gate. He must have
gone on up to the homestead, not seeing her. At the house, however, she
found they had not seen him. He had not called. A little hurt that he
should have galloped on so hastily, she set about some household
affairs, resolved to think no more of him that morning, and to give him
a frown when he came in the evening. But he did not come in the
evening; it was evident he was detained.
Luke's trees were lying in the long grass beside a copse, and the
object was to get them out of the field, across the adjacent railway,
and to set them down in a lane, on the sward, whence he could send for
them at leisure. The farmer was very anxious to get them out of the
grass, and Luke did his best to oblige him. When Luke arrived at the
spot, having for once ridden straight there, he found that almost all
the work was done, and only one tree remained. This they were getting
up on the timber-carriage, and Luke dismounted and assisted. While it
was on the timber-carriage, he said, as it was the last, they could
take it along to the wharf. The farmer had come down to watch how the
work got on, and with him was his little boy, a child of five or six.
When the boy saw the great tree fixed, he cried to be mounted on it for
a ride, but as it was so rough they persuaded him to ride on one of the
horses instead. As they all approached the gate at the level crossing,
a white gate with the words in long black letters, "To be kept Locked,"
they heard the roar of the morning express and stayed for it to go by.
So soon as the train had passed, the gate was opened and the horses
began to drag the carriage across. As they strained at the heavy
weight, the boy found the motion uncomfortable and cried out, and Luke,
always kind-hearted, went and held him on. Whether it was the shouting
at the team, the cracking of the whip, the rumbling of the wheels, or
what, was never known; but suddenly the farmer, who had crossed the
rail, screamed, "The goods!" Round the curve by the copse, and till
then hidden by it, swept a goods train, scarce thirty yards away. Luke
might have saved himself, but the boy! He snatched the child from the
horse, hurled him--literally hurled him--into the father's arms, and in
the instant was a shapeless mass. The scene is too dreadful for further
description. This miserable accident happened, as the driver of the
goods train afterwards stated, at exactly eight minutes past eleven
o'clock.
It was precisely at that time that Luke's lady, dreaming among the
cowslips, heard the noise of hoofs, and his long, shrill, and peculiar
whistle at the gate beneath the beech. She was certain of the time, for
these reasons: first, she had seen the wood-pigeon go up into the beech
just before she started out; secondly, she remembered nodding to an
aged labourer who came up to the house every morning at that hour for
his ale; thirdly, it would take a person walking slowly eight or ten
minutes to cross that side of the mead; and, fourthly, when she came
back to the house to see if Luke was there, the clock pointed to a
quarter past, and was known to be a little fast. Without a doubt she
had heard the well-known whistle, apparently coming from the gate
beneath the beech exactly at the moment poor Luke was dashed to pieces
twelve miles away.
III
A ROMAN BROOK
The brook has forgotten me, but I have not forgotten the brook. Many
faces have been mirrored since in the flowing water, many feet have
waded in the sandy shallow. I wonder if any one else can see it in a
picture before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly
shown at night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and
branches and the birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is
barely a second; it seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning,
reveals the pictures in the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow
is as familiar now as when I followed the winding stream so often. When
the mowing-grass was at its height, you could not walk far beside the
bank; it grew so thick and strong and full of umbelliferous plants as
to weary the knees. The life as it were of the meadows seemed to crowd
down towards the brook in summer, to reach out and stretch towards the
life-giving water. There the buttercups were taller and closer
together, nails of gold driven so thickly that the true surface was not
visible. Countless rootlets drew up the richness of the earth like
miners in the darkness, throwing their petals of yellow ore broadcast
above them. With their fulness of leaves the hawthorn bushes grow
larger--the trees extend farther--and thus overhung with leaf and
branch, and closely set about by grass and plant, the brook disappeared
only a little way off, and could not have been known from a mound and
hedge. It was lost in the plain of meads--the flowers alone saw its
sparkle.