Hatless, in the very front row, marched a tall slip of a girl,

arrow-straight, and so thin, with dirty fair hair, in a blouse and skirt

gaping behind, ever turning her pretty face on its pretty slim neck from

side to side, so that one could see her blue eyes sweeping here, there,

everywhere, with a sort of flower-like wildness, as if a secret embracing

of each moment forbade her to let them rest on anything and break this

pleasure of just marching. It seemed that in the never-still eyes of

that anaemic, happy girl the spirit of our march had elected to enshrine

itself and to make thence its little excursions to each ecstatic

follower. Just behind her marched a little old woman--a maker of chains,

they said, for forty years--whose black slits of eyes were sparkling,

who fluttered a bit of ribbon, and reeled with her sense of the exquisite

humour of the world. Every now and then she would make a rush at one of

her leaders to demonstrate how immoderately glorious was life. And each

time she spoke the woman next to her, laden with a heavy baby, went off

into squeals of laughter. Behind her, again, marched one who beat time

with her head and waved a little bit of stick, intoxicated by this noble

music.

For an hour the pageant wound through the dejected street, pursuing

neither method nor set route, till it came to a deserted slag-heap,

selected for the speech-making. Slowly the motley regiment swung into

that grim amphitheatre under the pale sunshine; and, as I watched, a

strange fancy visited my brain. I seemed to see over every ragged head

of those marching women a little yellow flame, a thin, flickering gleam,

spiring upward and blown back by the wind. A trick of the sunlight,

maybe? Or was it that the life in their hearts, the inextinguishable

breath of happiness, had for a moment escaped prison, and was fluttering

at the pleasure of the breeze?

Silent now, just enjoying the sound of the words thrown down to them,

they stood, unimaginably patient, with that happiness of they knew not

what gilding the air above them between the patchwork ribands of their

poor flags. If they could not tell very much why they had come, nor

believe very much that they would gain anything by coming; if their

demonstration did not mean to the world quite all that oratory would have

them think; if they themselves were but the poorest, humblest, least

learned women in the land--for all that, it seemed to me that in those

tattered, wistful figures, so still, so trustful, I was looking on such

beauty as I had never beheld. All the elaborated glory of things made,

the perfected dreams of aesthetes, the embroideries of romance, seemed as

nothing beside this sudden vision of the wild goodness native in humble

hearts.

1910.

A CHRISTIAN

One day that summer, I came away from a luncheon in company of an old

College chum. Always exciting to meet those one hasn't seen for years;

and as we walked across the Park together I kept looking at him askance.

He had altered a good deal. Lean he always was, but now very lean, and

so upright that his parson's coat was overhung by the back of his long

and narrow head, with its dark grizzled hair, which thought had not yet

loosened on his forehead. His clean-shorn face, so thin and oblong, was

remarkable only for the eyes: dark-browed and lashed, and coloured like

bright steel, they had a fixity in them, a sort of absence, on one

couldn't tell what business. They made me think of torture. And his

mouth always gently smiling, as if its pinched curly sweetness had been

commanded, was the mouth of a man crucified--yes, crucified!

Tramping silently over the parched grass, I felt that if we talked, we

must infallibly disagree; his straight-up, narrow forehead so suggested a

nature divided within itself into compartments of iron.

It was hot that day, and we rested presently beside the Serpentine. On

its bright waters were the usual young men, sculling themselves to and

fro with their usual sad energy, the usual promenaders loitering and

watching them, the usual dog that swam when it did not bark, and barked

when it did not swim; and my friend sat smiling, twisting between his

thin fingers the little gold cross on his silk vest.

Then all of a sudden we did begin to talk; and not of those matters of

which the well-bred naturally converse--the habits of the rarer kinds of

ducks, and the careers of our College friends, but of something never

mentioned in polite society.

At lunch our hostess had told me the sad story of an unhappy marriage,

and I had itched spiritually to find out what my friend, who seemed so

far away from me, felt about such things. And now I determined to find

out.

"Tell me," I asked him, "which do you consider most important--the letter

or the spirit of Christ's teachings?"

"My dear fellow," he answered gently, "what a question! How can you

separate them?"

"Well, is it not the essence of His doctrine that the spirit is all

important, and the forms of little value? Does not that run through all

the Sermon on the Mount?"

"Certainly."

"If, then," I said, "Christ's teaching is concerned with the spirit, do

you consider that Christians are justified in holding others bound by

formal rules of conduct, without reference to what is passing in their

spirits?"

"If it is for their good."

"What enables you to decide what is for their good?"

"Surely, we are told."

"Not to judge, that ye be not judged."

"Oh! but we do not, ourselves, judge; we are but impersonal ministers of

the rules of God."

"Ah! Do general rules of conduct take account of the variations of the

individual spirit?"

He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent heresy.

"You had better explain yourself more fully," he said. "I really don't

follow."

"Well, let us take a concrete instance. We know Christ's saying of the

married that they are one flesh! But we know also that there are wives

who continue to live the married life with dreadful feelings of spiritual

revolt wives who have found out that, in spite of all their efforts, they

have no spiritual affinity with their husbands. Is that in accordance

with the spirit of Christ's teaching, or is it not?"

"We are told----" he began.

"I have admitted the definite commandment: 'They twain shall be one

flesh.' There could not be, seemingly, any more rigid law laid down; how

do you reconcile it with the essence of Christ's teaching? Frankly, I

want to know: Is there or is there not a spiritual coherence in

Christianity, or is it only a gathering of laws and precepts, with no

inherent connected spiritual philosophy?"

"Of course," he said, in his long-suffering voice, "we don't look at

things like that--for us there is no questioning."

"But how do you reconcile such marriages as I speak of, with the spirit

of Christ's teaching? I think you ought to answer me."

"Oh! I can, perfectly," he answered; "the reconciliation is through

suffering. What a poor woman in such a case must suffer makes for the

salvation of her spirit. That is the spiritual fulfilment, and in such a

case the justification of the law."

"So then," I said, "sacrifice or suffering is the coherent thread of

Christian philosophy?"

"Suffering cheerfully borne," he answered.

"You do not think," I said, "that there is a touch of extravagance in

that? Would you say, for example, that an unhappy marriage is a more

Christian thing than a happy one, where there is no suffering, but only

love?"

A line came between his brows. "Well!" he said at last, "I would say, I

think, that a woman who crucifies her flesh with a cheerful spirit in

obedience to God's law, stands higher in the eyes of God than one who

undergoes no such sacrifice in her married life." And I had the feeling

that his stare was passing through me, on its way to an unseen goal.

"You would desire, then, I suppose, suffering as the greatest blessing

for yourself?"

"Humbly," he said, "I would try to."

"And naturally, for others?"

"God forbid!"

"But surely that is inconsistent."

He murmured: "You see, I have suffered."

We were silent. At last I said: "Yes, that makes much which was dark

quite clear to me."

"Oh?" he asked.

I answered slowly: "Not many men, you know, even in your profession, have

really suffered. That is why they do not feel the difficulty which you

feel in desiring suffering for others."

He threw up his head exactly as if I had hit him on the jaw: "It's

weakness in me, I know," he said.

"I should have rather called it weakness in them. But suppose you are

right, and that it's weakness not to be able to desire promiscuous

suffering for others, would you go further and say that it is Christian

for those, who have not experienced a certain kind of suffering, to force

that particular kind on others?"

He sat silent for a full minute, trying evidently to reach to the bottom

of my thought.

"Surely not," he said at last, "except as ministers of God's laws."

"You do not then think that it is Christian for the husband of such a

woman to keep her in that state of suffering--not being, of course, a

minister of God?"

He began stammering at that: "I--I----" he said. "No; that is, I think

not-not Christian. No, certainly."

"Then, such a marriage, if persisted in, makes of the wife indeed a

Christian, but of the husband--the reverse."

"The answer to that is clear," he said quietly: "The husband must

abstain."

"Yes, that is, perhaps, coherently Christian, on your theory: They would

then both suffer. But the marriage, of course, has become no marriage.

They are no longer one flesh."

He looked at me, almost impatiently as if to say: Do not compel me to

enforce silence on you!

"But, suppose," I went on, "and this, you know; is the more frequent

case, the man refuses to abstain. Would you then say it was more

Christian to allow him to become daily less Christian through his

unchristian conduct, than to relieve the woman of her suffering at the

expense of the spiritual benefit she thence derives? Why, in fact, do

you favour one case more than the other?"

"All question of relief," he replied, "is a matter for Caesar; it cannot

concern me."

There had come into his face a rigidity--as if I might hit it with my

questions till my tongue was tired, and it be no more moved than the

bench on which we were sitting.

"One more question," I said, "and I have done. Since the Christian

teaching is concerned with the spirit and not forms, and the thread in it

which binds all together and makes it coherent, is that of suffering----"

"Redemption by suffering," he put in.

"If you will--in one word, self-crucifixion--I must ask you, and don't

take it personally, because of what you told me of yourself: In life

generally, one does not accept from people any teaching that is not the

result of firsthand experience on their parts. Do you believe that this

Christian teaching of yours is valid from the mouths of those who have

not themselves suffered--who have not themselves, as it were, been

crucified?"

He did not answer for a minute; then he said, with painful slowness:

"Christ laid hands on his apostles and sent them forth; and they in turn,

and so on, to our day."

"Do you say, then, that this guarantees that they have themselves

suffered, so that in spirit they are identified with their teaching?"

He answered bravely: "No--I do not--I cannot say that in fact it is

always so."

"Is not then their teaching born of forms, and not of the spirit?"

He rose; and with a sort of deep sorrow at my stubbornness said: "We are

not permitted to know the way of this; it is so ordained; we must have

faith."

As he stood there, turned from me, with his hat off, and his neck

painfully flushed under the sharp outcurve of his dark head, a feeling of

pity surged up in me, as if I had taken an unfair advantage.

"Reason--coherence--philosophy," he said suddenly. "You don't

understand. All that is nothing to me--nothing--nothing!"

1911

WIND IN THE ROCKS

Though dew-dark when we set forth, there was stealing into the frozen air

an invisible white host of the wan-winged light--born beyond the

mountains, and already, like a drift of doves, harbouring grey-white high

up on the snowy skycaves of Monte Cristallo; and within us, tramping over

the valley meadows, was the incredible elation of those who set out

before the sun has risen; every minute of the precious day before us--we

had not lost one!

At the mouth of that enchanted chine, across which for a million years

the howdahed rock elephant has marched, but never yet passed from sight,

we crossed the stream, and among the trees began our ascent. Very far

away the first cowbells chimed; and, over the dark heights, we saw the

thin, sinking moon, looking like the white horns of some devotional beast

watching and waiting up there for the god of light. That god came

slowly, stalking across far over our heads from top to top; then, of a

sudden, his flame-white form was seen standing in a gap of the valley

walls; the trees flung themselves along the ground before him, and

censers of pine gum began swinging in the dark aisles, releasing their

perfumed steam. Throughout these happy ravines where no man lives, he

shows himself naked and unashamed, the colour of pale honey; on his

golden hair such shining as one has not elsewhere seen; his eyes like old

wine on fire. And already he had swept his hand across the invisible

strings, for there had arisen, the music of uncurling leaves and flitting

things.

A legend runs, that, driven from land to land by Christians, Apollo hid

himself in Lower Austria, but those who ever they saw him there in the

thirteenth century were wrong; it was to these enchanted chines,

frequented only by the mountain shepherds, that he certainly came.

And as we were lying on the grass, of the first alp, with the star

gentians--those fallen drops of the sky--and the burnt-brown dandelions,

and scattered shrubs of alpen-rose round us, we were visited by one of

these very shepherds, passing with his flock--the fiercest-looking man

who ever, spoke in a gentle voice; six feet high, with an orange cloak,

bare knees; burnt as the very dandelions, a beard blacker than black, and

eyes more glorious than if sun and night had dived and were lying

imprisoned in their depths. He spoke in an unknown tongue, and could

certainly not understand any word of ours; but he smelled of the good

earth, and only through interminable watches under sun and stars could so

great a gentleman have been perfected.

Presently, while we rested outside that Alpine hut which faces the three

sphinx-like mountains, there came back, from climbing the smallest and

most dangerous of those peaks, one, pale from heat, and trembling with

fatigue; a tall man, with long brown hands, and a long, thin, bearded

face. And, as he sipped cautiously of red wine and water, he looked at

his little conquered mountain. His kindly, screwed-up eyes, his kindly,

bearded lips, even his limbs seemed smiling; and not for the world would

we have jarred with words that rapt, smiling man, enjoying the sacred

hour of him who has just proved himself. In silence we watched, in

silence left him smiling, knowing somehow that we should remember him all

our days. For there was in his smile the glamour of adventure just for

the sake of danger; all that high instinct which takes a man out of his

chair to brave what he need not.

Between that hut and the three mountains lies a saddle--astride of all

beauty and all colour, master of a titanic chaos of deep clefts, tawny

heights, red domes, far snow, and the purple of long shadows; and,

standing there, we comprehended a little of what Earth had been through

in her time, to have made this playground for most glorious demons.

Mother Earth! What travail undergone, what long heroic throes, had

brought on her face such majesty!

Hereabout edelweiss was clinging to smoothed-out rubble; but a little

higher, even the everlasting plant was lost, there was no more life. And

presently we lay down on the mountain side, rather far apart. Up here

above trees and pasture the wind had a strange, bare voice, free from all

outer influence, sweeping along with a cold, whiffing sound. On the warm

stones, in full sunlight, uplifted over all the beauty of Italy, one felt

at first only delight in space and wild loveliness, in the unknown

valleys, and the strength of the sun. It was so good to be alive; so

ineffably good to be living in this most wonderful world, drinking air

nectar.

Behind us, from the three mountains, came the frequent thud and scuffle

of falling rocks, loosened by rains. The wind, mist, and winter snow had

ground the powdery stones on which we lay to a pleasant bed, but once on

a time they, too, had clung up there. And very slowly, one could not say

how or when, the sense of joy began changing to a sense of fear. The

awful impersonality of those great rock-creatures, the terrible

impartiality of that cold, clinging wind which swept by, never an inch

lifted above ground! Not one tiny soul, the size of a midge or rock

flower, lived here. Not one little "I" breathed here, and loved!

And we, too, some day would no longer love, having become part of this

monstrous, lovely earth, of that cold, whiffling air. To be no longer

able to love! It seemed incredible, too grim to bear; yet it was true!

To become powder, and the wind; no more to feel the sunlight; to be loved

no more! To become a whiffling noise, cold, without one's self! To

drift on the breath of that noise, homeless! Up here, there were not even

those little velvet, grey-white flower-comrades we had plucked. No life!

Nothing but the creeping wind, and those great rocky heights, whence came

the sound of falling-symbols of that cold, untimely state into which we,

too, must pass. Never more to love, nor to be loved! One could but turn

to the earth, and press one's face to it, away from the wild loveliness.

Of what use loveliness that must be lost; of what use loveliness when one

could not love? The earth was warm and firm beneath the palms of the

hands; but there still came the sound of the impartial wind, and the

careless roar of the stories falling.

Below, in those valleys amongst the living trees and grass, was the

comradeship of unnumbered life, so that to pass out into Peace, to step

beyond, to die, seemed but a brotherly act, amongst all those others; but

up here, where no creature breathed, we saw the heart of the desert that

stretches before each little human soul. Up here, it froze the spirit;

even Peace seemed mocking--hard as a stone. Yet, to try and hide, to

tuck one's head under one's own wing, was not possible in this air so

crystal clear, so far above incense and the narcotics of set creeds, and

the fevered breath of prayers and protestations. Even to know that

between organic and inorganic matter there is no gulf fixed, was of no

peculiar comfort. The jealous wind came creeping over the lifeless

limestone, removing even the poor solace of its warmth; one turned from

it, desperate, to look up at the sky, the blue, burning, wide, ineffable,

far sky.

Then slowly, without reason, that icy fear passed into a feeling, not of

joy, not of peace, but as if Life and Death were exalted into what was

neither life nor death, a strange and motionless vibration, in which one

had been merged, and rested, utterly content, equipoised, divested of

desire, endowed with life and death.

But since this moment had come before its time, we got up, and, close

together, marched on rather silently, in the hot sun.

1910.

MY DISTANT RELATIVE

Though I had not seen my distant relative for years--not, in fact, since

he was obliged to give Vancouver Island up as a bad job--I knew him at

once, when, with head a little on one side, and tea-cup held high, as if,

to confer a blessing, he said: "Hallo!" across the Club smoking-room.

Thin as a lath--not one ounce heavier--tall, and very upright, with his

pale forehead, and pale eyes, and pale beard, he had the air of a ghost

of a man. He had always had that air. And his voice--that

matter-of-fact and slightly nasal voice, with its thin, pragmatical

tone--was like a wraith of optimism, issuing between pale lips. I

noticed; too, that his town habiliments still had their unspeakable pale

neatness, as if, poor things, they were trying to stare the daylight out

of countenance.

He brought his tea across to my bay window, with that wistful sociability

of his, as of a man who cannot always find a listener.

"But what are you doing in town?" I said. "I thought you were in

Yorkshire with your aunt."

Over his round, light eyes, fixed on something in the street, the lids

fell quickly twice, as the film falls over the eyes of a parrot.

"I'm after a job," he answered. "Must be on the spot just now."

And it seemed to me that I had heard those words from him before.

"Ah, yes," I said, "and do you think you'll get it?"

But even as I spoke I felt sorry, remembering how many jobs he had been

after in his time, and how soon they ended when he had got them.

He answered:

"Oh, yes! They ought to give it me," then added rather suddenly: "You

never know, though. People are so funny!"

And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell me, with quaint

impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in

connection with jobs he had not been given.

"You see," he ended, "the country's in such a state--capital going out of

it every day. Enterprise being killed all over the place. There's

practically nothing to be had!"

"Ah!" I said, "you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?"

He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage.

"We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. National character's

losing all its backbone. No wonder, with all this molly-coddling going

on!"

"Oh!" I murmured, "molly-coddling? Isn't that excessive?"

"Well! Look at the way everything's being done for them! The working

classes are losing their, self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their

independence is gone already!"

"You think?"

"Sure of it! I'll give you an instance----" and he went on to describe

to me the degeneracy of certain working men employed by his aunt and his

eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan.

"They don't do a stroke more than they're obliged," he ended; "they know

jolly well they've got their Unions, and their pensions, and this

Insurance, to fall back on."

It was evidently a subject on which he felt strongly.

"Yes," he muttered, "the nation is being rotted down."

And a faint thrill of surprise passed through me. For the affairs of the

nation moved him so much more strongly than his own. His voice already

had a different ring, his eyes a different look. He eagerly leaned

forward, and his long, straight backbone looked longer and straighter

than ever. He was less the ghost of a man. A faint flush even had come

into his pale cheeks, and he moved his well-kept hands emphatically.

"Oh, yes!" he said: "The country is going to the dogs, right enough; but

you can't get them to see it. They go on sapping and sapping the

independence of the people. If the working man's to be looked after,

whatever he does--what on earth's to become of his go, and foresight, and

perseverance?"

In his rising voice a certain piquancy was left to its accent of the

ruling class by that faint twang, which came, I remembered, from some

slight defect in his tonsils.

"Mark my words! So long as we're on these lines, we shall do nothing.

It's going against evolution. They say Darwin's getting old-fashioned;

all I know is, he's good enough for me. Competition is the only thing."

"But competition," I said, "is bitter cruel, and some people can't stand

against it!" And I looked at him rather hard: "Do you object to putting

any sort of floor under the feet of people like that?"

He let his voice drop a little, as if in deference to my scruples.

"Ah!" he said; "but if you once begin this sort of thing, there's no end

to it. It's so insidious. The more they have, the more they want; and

all the time they're losing fighting power. I've thought pretty deeply

about this. It's shortsighted; it really doesn't do!"

"But," I said, "surely you're not against saving people from being

knocked out of time by old age, and accidents like illness, and the

fluctuations of trade?"

"Oh!" he said, "I'm not a bit against charity. Aunt Emma's splendid

about that. And Claud's awfully good. I do what I can, myself." He

looked at me, so queerly deprecating, that I quite liked him at that

moment. At heart--I felt he was a good fellow. "All I think is," he

went on, "that to give them something that they can rely on as a matter

of course, apart from their own exertions, is the wrong principle

altogether," and suddenly his voice began to rise again, and his eyes to

stare. "I'm convinced that all this doing things for other people, and

bolstering up the weak, is rotten. It stands to reason that it must be."

He had risen to his feet, so preoccupied with the wrongness of that

principle that he seemed to have forgotten my presence. And as he stood

there in the window the light was too strong for him. All the thin

incapacity of that shadowy figure was pitilessly displayed; the desperate

narrowness in that long, pale face; the wambling look of those pale,

well-kept hands--all that made him such a ghost of a man. But his nasal,

dogmatic voice rose and rose.

"There's nothing for it but bracing up! We must cut away all this State

support; we must teach them to rely on themselves. It's all sheer

pauperisation."

And suddenly there shot through me the fear that he might burst one of

those little blue veins in his pale forehead, so vehement had he become;

and hastily I changed the subject.

"Do you like living up there with your aunt?" I asked: "Isn't it a bit

quiet?"

He turned, as if I had awakened him from a dream.

"Oh, well!" he said, "it's only till I get this job."

"Let me see--how long is it since you----?"

"Four years. She's very glad to have me, of course."

"And how's your brother Claud?"

"Oh! All right, thanks; a bit worried with the estate. The poor old

gov'nor left it in rather a mess, you know."

"Ah! Yes. Does he do other work?"

"Oh! Always busy in the parish."

"And your brother Richard?"

"He's all right. Came home this year. Got just enough to live on, with

his pension--hasn't saved a rap, of course."

"And Willie? Is he still delicate?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"Easy job, his, you know. And even if his health does give out, his

college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. So jolly

popular, old Willie!"

"And Alan? I haven't heard anything of him since his Peruvian thing came

to grief. He married, didn't he?"

"Rather! One of the Burleys. Nice girl--heiress; lot of property in

Hampshire. He looks after it for her now."

"Doesn't do anything else, I suppose?"

"Keeps up his antiquarianism."

I had exhausted the members of his family.

Then, as though by eliciting the good fortunes of his brothers I had cast

some slur upon himself, he said suddenly: "If the railway had come, as it

ought to have, while I was out there, I should have done quite well with

my fruit farm."

"Of course," I agreed; "it was bad luck. But after all, you're sure to

get a job soon, and--so long as you can live up there with your aunt--you

can afford to wait, and not bother."

"Yes," he murmured. And I got up.

"Well, it's been very jolly to hear about you all!"

He followed me out.

"Awfully glad, old man," he said, "to have seen you, and had this talk.

I was feeling rather low. Waiting to know whether I get that job--it's

not lively."

He came down the Club steps with me. By the door of my cab a loafer was

standing; a tall tatterdemalion with a pale, bearded face. My distant

relative fended him away, and leaning through the window, murmured:

"Awful lot of these chaps about now!"

For the life of me I could not help looking at him very straight. But no

flicker of apprehension crossed his face.

"Well, good-by again!" he said: "You've cheered me up a lot!"

I glanced back from my moving cab. Some monetary transaction was passing

between him and the loafer, but, short-sighted as I am, I found it

difficult to decide which of those tall, pale, bearded figures was giving

the other one a penny. And by some strange freak an awful vision shot up

before me--of myself, and my distant relative, and Claud, and Richard,

and Willie, and Alan, all suddenly relying on ourselves. I took out my

handkerchief to mop my brow; but a thought struck me, and I put it back.

Was it possible for me, and my distant relatives, and their distant

relatives, and so on to infinity of those who be longed to a class

provided by birth with a certain position, raised by Providence on to a

platform made up of money inherited, of interest, of education fitting us

for certain privileged pursuits, of friends similarly endowed, of

substantial homes, and substantial relatives of some sort or other, on

whom we could fall back--was it possible for any of us ever to be in the

position of having to rely absolutely on ourselves? For several minutes

I pondered that question; and slowly I came to the conclusion that, short

of crime, or that unlikely event, marooning, it was not possible. Never,

never--try as we might--could any single one of us be quite in the

position of one of those whose approaching pauperisation my distant

relative had so vehemently deplored. We were already pauperised. If we

served our country, we were pensioned.... If we inherited land, it could

not be taken from us. If we went into the Church, we were there for life,

whether we were suitable or no. If we attempted the more hazardous

occupations of the law, medicine, the arts, or business, there were

always those homes, those relations, those friends of ours to fall back

on, if we failed. No! We could never have to rely entirely on

ourselves; we could never be pauperised more than we were already! And a

light burst in on me. That explained why my distant relative felt so

keenly. It bit him, for he saw, of course, how dreadful it would be for

these poor people of the working classes when legislation had succeeded

in placing them in the humiliating position in which we already were--the

dreadful position of having something to depend on apart from our own

exertions, some sort of security in our lives. I saw it now. It was his

secret pride, gnawing at him all the time, that made him so rabid on the

point. He was longing, doubtless, day and night, not to have had a

father who had land, and had left a sister well enough off to keep him

while he was waiting for his job. He must be feeling how horribly

degrading was the position of Claud--inheriting that land; and of

Richard, who, just because he had served in the Indian Civil Service, had

got to live on a pension all the rest of his days; and of Willie, who was

in danger at any moment, if his health--always delicate--gave out, of

having a sinecure found for him by his college friends; and of Alan,

whose educated charm had enabled him to marry an heiress and live by

managing her estates. All, all sapped of go and foresight and

perseverance by a cruel Providence! That was what he was really feeling,

and concealing, be cause he was too well-bred to show his secret grief.

And I felt suddenly quite warm toward him, now that I saw how he was

suffering. I understood how bound he felt in honour to combat with all

his force this attempt to place others in his own distressing situation.

At the same time I was honest enough to confess to myself sitting there

in the cab--that I did not personally share that pride of his, or feel

that I was being rotted by my own position; I even felt some dim

gratitude that if my powers gave out at any time, and I had not saved

anything, I should still not be left destitute to face the prospect of a

bleak and impoverished old age; and I could not help a weak pleasure in

the thought that a certain relative security was being guaranteed to

those people of the working classes who had never had it before. At the

same moment I quite saw that to a prouder and stronger heart it must

indeed be bitter to have to sit still under your own security, and even

more bitter to have to watch that pauperising security coming closer and

closer to others--for the generous soul is always more concerned for

others than for himself. No doubt, I thought, if truth were known, my

distant relative is consumed with longing to change places with that

loafer who tried to open the door of my cab--for surely he must see, as I

do, that that is just what he himself--having failed to stand the

pressure of competition in his life--would be doing if it were not for

the accident of his birth, which has so lamentably insured him against

coming to that.

"Yes," I thought, "you have learnt something to-day; it does not do, you

see, hastily to despise those distant relatives of yours, who talk about

pauperising and molly-coddling the lower classes. No, no! One must look

deeper than that! One must have generosity!"

And with that I stopped the cab and got out for I wanted a breath of air.

1911

THE BLACK GODMOTHER

Sitting out on the lawn at tea with our friend and his retriever, we had

been discussing those massacres of the helpless which had of late

occurred, and wondering that they should have been committed by the

soldiery of so civilised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our

astonishment, our friend, who had been listening in silence, crumpling

the drooping soft ear of his dog, looked up and said, "The cause of

atrocities is generally the violence of Fear. Panic's at the back of

most crimes and follies."

Knowing that his philosophical statements were always the result of

concrete instance, and that he would not tell us what that instance was

if we asked him--such being his nature--we were careful not to agree.

He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so like the eyes of a mild

eagle, and said abruptly: "What do you say to this, then?..... I was out

in the dog-days last year with this fellow of mine, looking for Osmunda,

and stayed some days in a village--never mind the name. Coming back one

evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning a mealy-coloured dog. I

went up and told the young devils to stop it. They only looked at me in

the injured way boys do, and one of them called out, 'It's mad, guv'nor!'

I told them to clear off, and they took to their heels. The dog followed

me. It was a young, leggy, mild looking mongrel, cross--I should

say--between a brown retriever and an Irish terrier. There was froth

about its lips, and its eyes were watery; it looked indeed as if it might

be in distemper. I was afraid of infection for this fellow of mine, and

whenever it came too close shooed it away, till at last it slunk off

altogether. Well, about nine o'clock, when I was settling down to write

by the open window of my sitting-room--still daylight, and very quiet and

warm--there began that most maddening sound, the barking of an unhappy

dog. I could do nothing with that continual 'Yap yap!' going on, and it

was too hot to shut the window; so I went out to see if I could stop it.

The men were all at the pub, and the women just finished with their

gossip; there was no sound at all but the continual barking of this dog,

somewhere away out in the fields. I travelled by ear across three

meadows, till I came on a hay-stack by a pool of water. There was the

dog sure enough--the same mealy-coloured mongrel, tied to a stake,

yapping, and making frantic little runs on a bit of rusty chain; whirling

round and round the stake, then standing quite still, and shivering. I

went up and spoke to it, but it backed into the hay-stack, and there it

stayed shrinking away from me, with its tongue hanging out. It had been

heavily struck by something on the head; the cheek was cut, one eye

half-closed, and an ear badly swollen. I tried to get hold of it, but

the poor thing was beside itself with fear. It snapped and flew round so

that I had to give it up, and sit down with this fellow here beside me,

to try and quiet it--a strange dog, you know, will generally form his

estimate of you from the way it sees you treat another dog. I had to sit

there quite half an hour before it would let me go up to it, pull the

stake out, and lead it away. The poor beast, though it was so feeble

from the blows it had received, was still half-frantic, and I didn't dare

to touch it; and all the time I took good care that this fellow here

didn't come too near. Then came the question what was to be done. There

was no vet, of course, and I'd no place to put it except my sitting-room,

which didn't belong to me. But, looking at its battered head, and its

half-mad eyes, I thought: 'No trusting you with these bumpkins; you'll

have to come in here for the night!' Well, I got it in, and heaped two or

three of those hairy little red rugs landladies are so fond of, up in a

corner; and got it on to them, and put down my bread and milk. But it

wouldn't eat--its sense of proportion was all gone, fairly destroyed by

terror. It lay there moaning, and every now and then it raised its head

with a 'yap' of sheer fright, dreadful to hear, and bit the air, as if

its enemies were on it again; and this fellow of mine lay in the opposite

corner, with his head on his paw, watching it. I sat up for a long time

with that poor beast, sick enough, and wondering how it had come to be

stoned and kicked and battered into this state; and next day I made it my

business to find out."

Our friend paused, scanned us a little angrily, and then went on: "It had

made its first appearance, it seems, following a bicyclist. There are

men, you know--save the mark--who, when their beasts get ill or too

expensive, jump on their bicycles and take them for a quick run, taking

care never to look behind them. When they get back home they say:

'Hallo! where's Fido?' Fido is nowhere, and there's an end! Well, this

poor puppy gave up just as it got to our village; and, roaming shout in

search of water, attached itself to a farm labourer. The man with

excellent intentions--as he told me himself--tried to take hold of it,

but too abruptly, so that it was startled, and snapped at him. Whereon

he kicked it for a dangerous cur, and it went drifting back toward the

village, and fell in with the boys coming home from school. It thought,

no doubt, that they were going to kick it too, and nipped one of them who

took it by the collar. Thereupon they hullabalooed and stoned it down the

road to where I found them. Then I put in my little bit of torture, and

drove it away, through fear of infection to my own dog. After that it

seems to have fallen in with a man who told me: 'Well, you see, he came

sneakin' round my house, with the children playin', and snapped at them

when they went to stroke him, so that they came running in to their

mother, an' she' called to me in a fine takin' about a mad dog. I ran out

with a shovel and gave 'im one, and drove him out. I'm sorry if he

wasn't mad, he looked it right enough; you can't be too careful with

strange dogs.' Its next acquaintance was an old stone-breaker, a very

decent sort. 'Well! you see,' the old man explained to me, 'the dog came

smellin' round my stones, an' it wouldn' come near, an' it wouldn' go

away; it was all froth and blood about the jaw, and its eyes glared green

at me. I thought to meself, bein' the dog-days--I don't like the look o'

you, you look funny! So I took a stone, an' got it here, just on the

ear; an' it fell over. And I thought to meself: Well, you've got to

finish it, or it'll go bitin' somebody, for sure! But when I come to it

with my hammer, the dog it got up--an' you know how it is when there's

somethin' you've 'alf killed, and you feel sorry, and yet you feel you

must finish it, an' you hit at it blind, you hit at it agen an' agen.

The poor thing, it wriggled and snapped, an' I was terrified it'd bite

me, an' some'ow it got away."' Again our friend paused, and this time we

dared not look at him.

"The next hospitality it was shown," he went on presently, "was by a

farmer, who, seeing it all bloody, drove it off, thinking it had been

digging up a lamb that he'd just buried. The poor homeless beast came

sneaking back, so he told his men to get rid of it. Well, they got hold

of it somehow--there was a hole in its neck that looked as if they'd used

a pitchfork--and, mortally afraid of its biting them, but not liking, as

they told me, to drown it, for fear the owner might come on them, they

got a stake and a chain, and fastened it up, and left it in the water by

the hay-stack where I found it. I had some conversation with that

farmer. 'That's right,' he said, 'but who was to know? I couldn't have

my sheep worried. The brute had blood on his muzzle. These curs do a

lot of harm when they've once been blooded. You can't run risks."' Our

friend cut viciously at a dandelion with his stick. "Run risks!" he

broke out suddenly: "That was it from beginning to end of that poor

beast's sufferings, fear! From that fellow on the bicycle, afraid of the

worry and expense, as soon as it showed signs of distemper, to myself and

the man with the pitch fork--not one of us, I daresay, would have gone

out of our way to do it--a harm. But we felt fear, and so by the law of

self-preservation, or what ever you like--it all began, till there the

poor thing was, with a battered head and a hole in its neck, ravenous

with hunger, and too distraught even to lap my bread and milk. Yes, and

there's something uncanny about a suffering animal--we sat watching it,

and again we were afraid, looking at its eyes and the way it bit the air.

Fear! It's the black godmother of all damnable things!"

Our friend bent down, crumpling and crumpling at his dog's ears. We,

too, gazed at the ground, thinking of, that poor lost puppy, and the

horrible inevitability of all that happens, seeing men are what they are;

thinking of all the foul doings in the world, whose black godmother is

Fear.

"And what became of the poor dog?" one of us asked at last.

"When," said our friend slowly, "I'd had my fill of watching, I covered

it with a rug, took this fellow away with me, and went to bed. There was

nothing else to do. At dawn I was awakened by three dreadful cries--not

like a dog's at all. I hurried down. There was the poor beast--wriggled

out from under the rug-stretched on its side, dead. This fellow of mine

had followed me in, and he went and sat down by the body. When I spoke

to him he just looked round, and wagged his tail along the ground, but

would not come away; and there he sat till it was buried, very

interested, but not sorry at all."

Our friend was silent, looking angrily at something in the distance.

And we, too, were silent, seeing in spirit that vigil of early morning:

The thin, lifeless, sandy-coloured body, stretched on those red mats; and

this black creature--now lying at our feet--propped on its haunches like

the dog in "The Death of Procris," patient, curious, ungrieved, staring

down at it with his bright, interested eyes.

1912.

STUDIES AND ESSAYS

By John Galsworthy

"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."

--ANATOLE FRANCE

CONCERNING LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

QUALITY

THE GRAND JURY

GONE

THRESHING

THAT OLD-TIME PLACE

ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS

MEMORIES

FELICITY

QUALITY

I knew him from the days of my extreme youth, because he made my father's

boots; inhabiting with his elder brother two little shops let into one,

in a small by-street-now no more, but then most fashionably placed in the

West End.

That tenement had a certain quiet distinction; there was no sign upon its

face that he made for any of the Royal Family--merely his own German name

of Gessler Brothers; and in the window a few pairs of boots. I remember

that it always troubled me to account for those unvarying boots in the

window, for he made only what was ordered, reaching nothing down, and it

seemed so inconceivable that what he made could ever have failed to fit.

Had he bought them to put there? That, too, seemed inconceivable. He

would never have tolerated in his house leather on which he had not

worked himself. Besides, they were too beautiful--the pair of pumps, so

inexpressibly slim, the patent leathers with cloth tops, making water

come into one's mouth, the tall brown riding boots with marvellous sooty

glow, as if, though new, they had been worn a hundred years. Those pairs

could only have been made by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot--so

truly were they prototypes incarnating the very spirit of all foot-gear.

These thoughts, of course, came to me later, though even when I was

promoted to him, at the age of perhaps fourteen, some inkling haunted me

of the dignity of himself and brother. For to make boots--such boots as

he made--seemed to me then, and still seems to me, mysterious and

wonderful.

I remember well my shy remark, one day, while stretching out to him my

youthful foot:

"Isn't it awfully hard to do, Mr. Gessler?"

And his answer, given with a sudden smile from out of the sardonic

redness of his beard: "Id is an Ardt!"

Himself, he was a little as if made from leather, with his yellow crinkly

face, and crinkly reddish hair and beard; and neat folds slanting down

his cheeks to the corners of his mouth, and his guttural and one-toned

voice; for leather is a sardonic substance, and stiff and slow of

purpose. And that was the character of his face, save that his eyes,

which were grey-blue, had in them the simple gravity of one secretly

possessed by the Ideal. His elder brother was so very like him--though

watery, paler in every way, with a great industry--that sometimes in

early days I was not quite sure of him until the interview was over.

Then I knew that it was he, if the words, "I will ask my brudder," had

not been spoken; and that, if they had, it was his elder brother.

When one grew old and wild and ran up bills, one somehow never ran them

up with Gessler Brothers. It would not have seemed becoming to go in

there and stretch out one's foot to that blue iron-spectacled glance,

owing him for more than--say--two pairs, just the comfortable reassurance

that one was still his client.

For it was not possible to go to him very often--his boots lasted

terribly, having something beyond the temporary--some, as it were,

essence of boot stitched into them.

One went in, not as into most shops, in the mood of: "Please serve me,

and let me go!" but restfully, as one enters a church; and, sitting on

the single wooden chair, waited--for there was never anybody there.

Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well--rather dark, and smelling

soothingly of leather--which formed the shop, there would be seen his

face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and

the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he

would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron,

with sleeves turned back, blinking--as if awakened from some dream of

boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this

interruption.

And I would say: "How do you do, Mr. Gessler? Could you make me a pair

of Russia leather boots?"

Without a word he would leave me, retiring whence he came, or into the

other portion of the shop, and I would, continue to rest in the wooden

chair, inhaling the incense of his trade. Soon he would come back,

holding in his thin, veined hand a piece of gold-brown leather. With eyes

fixed on it, he would remark: "What a beaudiful biece!" When I, too, had

admired it, he would speak again. "When do you wand dem?" And I would

answer: "Oh! As soon as you conveniently can." And he would say:

"To-morrow fordnighd?" Or if he were his elder brother: "I will ask my

brudder!"

Then I would murmur: "Thank you! Good-morning, Mr. Gessler."

"Goot-morning!" he would reply, still looking at the leather in his hand.

And as I moved to the door, I would hear the tip-tap of his bast slippers

restoring him, up the stairs, to his dream of boots. But if it were some

new kind of foot-gear that he had not yet made me, then indeed he would

observe ceremony--divesting me of my boot and holding it long in his

hand, looking at it with eyes at once critical and loving, as if

recalling the glow with which he had created it, and rebuking the way in

which one had disorganized this masterpiece. Then, placing my foot on a

piece of paper, he would two or three times tickle the outer edges with a

pencil and pass his nervous fingers over my toes, feeling himself into

the heart of my requirements.

I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to him; "Mr.

Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you know."

He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting me to

withdraw or qualify the statement, then said:

"Id shouldn'd 'ave greaked."

"It did, I'm afraid."

"You goddem wed before dey found demselves?"

"I don't think so."

At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of those boots, and

I felt sorry I had mentioned this grave thing.

"Zend dem back!" he said; "I will look at dem."

A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so well

could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he would

bend on them.

"Zome boods," he said slowly, "are bad from birdt. If I can do noding

wid dem, I dake dem off your bill."

Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into his shop in a pair of boots

bought in an emergency at some large firm's. He took my order without

showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes penetrating the

inferior integument of my foot. At last he said:

"Dose are nod my boods."

The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt, but

there was in it something quiet that froze the blood. He put his hand

down and pressed a finger on the place where the left boot, endeavouring

to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.

"Id 'urds you dere,", he said. "Dose big virms 'ave no self-respect.

Drash!" And then, as if something had given way within him, he spoke

long and bitterly. It was the only time I ever heard him discuss the

conditions and hardships of his trade.

"Dey get id all," he said, "dey get id by adverdisement, nod by work. Dey

dake it away from us, who lofe our boods. Id gomes to this--bresently I

haf no work. Every year id gets less you will see." And looking at his

lined face I saw things I had never noticed before, bitter things and

bitter struggle--and what a lot of grey hairs there seemed suddenly in

his red beard!

As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase of those

ill-omened boots. But his face and voice made so deep impression that

during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs. Nemesis fell! They

lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not able conscientiously to go

to him for nearly two years.

When at last I went I was surprised to find that outside one of the two

little windows of his shop another name was painted, also that of a

bootmaker-making, of course, for the Royal Family. The old familiar

boots, no longer in dignified isolation, were huddled in the single

window. Inside, the now contracted well of the one little shop was more

scented and darker than ever. And it was longer than usual, too, before

a face peered down, and the tip-tap of the bast slippers began. At last

he stood before me, and, gazing through those rusty iron spectacles,

said:

"Mr.-----, isn'd it?"

"Ah! Mr. Gessler," I stammered, "but your boots are really too good,

you know! See, these are quite decent still!" And I stretched out to

him my foot. He looked at it.

"Yes," he said, "beople do nod wand good hoods, id seems."

To get away from his reproachful eyes and voice I hastily remarked: "What

have you done to your shop?"

He answered quietly: "Id was too exbensif. Do you wand some boods?"

I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted two, and quickly left. I

had, I do not know quite what feeling of being part, in his mind, of a

conspiracy against him; or not perhaps so much against him as against his

idea of boot. One does not, I suppose, care to feel like that; for it

was again many months before my next visit to his shop, paid, I remember,

with the feeling: "Oh! well, I can't leave the old boy--so here goes!

Perhaps it'll be his elder brother!"

For his elder brother, I knew, had not character enough to reproach me,

even dumbly.

And, to my relief, in the shop there did appear to be his elder brother,

handling a piece of leather.

"Well, Mr. Gessler," I said, "how are you?"

He came close, and peered at me.

"I am breddy well," he said slowly "but my elder brudder is dead."

And I saw that it was indeed himself--but how aged and wan! And never

before had I heard him mention his brother. Much shocked; I murmured:

"Oh! I am sorry!"

"Yes," he answered, "he was a good man, he made a good bood; but he is

dead." And he touched the top of his head, where the hair had suddenly

gone as thin as it had been on that of his poor brother, to indicate, I

suppose, the cause of death. "He could nod ged over losing de oder shop.

Do you wand any hoods?" And he held up the leather in his hand: "Id's a

beaudiful biece."

I ordered several pairs. It was very long before they came--but they

were better than ever. One simply could not wear them out. And soon

after that I went abroad.

It was over a year before I was again in London. And the first shop I

went to was my old friend's. I had left a man of sixty, I came back to

one of seventy-five, pinched and worn and tremulous, who genuinely, this

time, did not at first know me.

"Oh! Mr. Gessler," I said, sick at heart; "how splendid your boots are!

See, I've been wearing this pair nearly all the time I've been abroad;

and they're not half worn out, are they?"

He looked long at my boots--a pair of Russia leather, and his face seemed

to regain steadiness. Putting his hand on my instep, he said:

"Do dey vid you here? I 'ad drouble wid dat bair, I remember."

I assured him that they had fitted beautifully.

"Do you wand any boods?" he said. "I can make dem quickly; id is a slack

dime."

I answered: "Please, please! I want boots all round--every kind!"

"I will make a vresh model. Your food must be bigger." And with utter

slowness, he traced round my foot, and felt my toes, only once looking up

to say:

"Did I dell you my brudder was dead?"

To watch him was painful, so feeble had he grown; I was glad to get away.

I had given those boots up, when one evening they came. Opening the

parcel, I set the four pairs out in a row. Then one by one I tried them

on. There was no doubt about it. In shape and fit, in finish and

quality of leather, they were the best he had ever made me. And in the

mouth of one of the Town walking-boots I found his bill.

The amount was the same as usual, but it gave me quite a shock. He had

never before sent it in till quarter day. I flew down-stairs, and wrote

a cheque, and posted it at once with my own hand.

A week later, passing the little street, I thought I would go in and tell

him how splendidly the new boots fitted. But when I came to where his

shop had been, his name was gone. Still there, in the window, were the

slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the sooty riding boots.

I went in, very much disturbed. In the two little shops--again made into

one--was a young man with an English face.

"Mr. Gessler in?" I said.

He gave me a strange, ingratiating look.

"No, sir," he said, "no. But we can attend to anything with pleasure.

We've taken the shop over. You've seen our name, no doubt, next door.

We make for some very good people."

"Yes, Yes," I said; "but Mr. Gessler?"

"Oh!" he answered; "dead."

"Dead! But I only received these boots from him last Wednesday week."

"Ah!" he said; "a shockin' go. Poor old man starved 'imself."

"Good God!"

"Slow starvation, the doctor called it! You see he went to work in such

a way! Would keep the shop on; wouldn't have a soul touch his boots

except himself. When he got an order, it took him such a time. People

won't wait. He lost everybody. And there he'd sit, goin' on and on--I

will say that for him not a man in London made a better boot! But look

at the competition! He never advertised! Would 'ave the best leather,

too, and do it all 'imself. Well, there it is. What could you expect

with his ideas?"

"But starvation----!"

"That may be a bit flowery, as the sayin' is--but I know myself he was

sittin' over his boots day and night, to the very last. You see I used

to watch him. Never gave 'imself time to eat; never had a penny in the

house. All went in rent and leather. How he lived so long I don't know.

He regular let his fire go out. He was a character. But he made good

boots."

"Yes," I said, "he made good boots."

And I turned and went out quickly, for I did not want that youth to know

that I could hardly see.

1911

THE GRAND JURY--IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME

Read that piece of paper, which summoned me to sit on the Grand Jury at

the approaching Sessions, lying in a scoop of the shore close to the

great rollers of the sea--that span of eternal freedom, deprived just

there of too great liberty by the word "Atlantic." And I remember

thinking, as I read, that in each breaking wave was some particle which

had visited every shore in all the world--that in each sparkle of hot

sunlight stealing that bright water up into the sky, was the microcosm of

all change, and of all unity.

PANEL I

In answer to that piece of paper, I presented myself at the proper place

in due course and with a certain trepidation. What was it that I was

about to do? For I had no experience of these things. And, being too

early, I walked a little to and fro, looking at all those my partners in

this matter of the purification of Society. Prosecutors, witnesses,

officials, policemen, detectives, undetected, pressmen, barristers,

loafers, clerks, cadgers, jurymen. And I remember having something of

the feeling that one has when one looks into a sink without holding one's

nose. There was such uneasy hurry, so strange a disenchanted look, a

sort of spiritual dirt, about all that place, and there were--faces! And

I thought: To them my face must seem as their faces seem to me!

Soon I was taken with my accomplices to have my name called, and to be

sworn. I do not remember much about that process, too occupied with

wondering what these companions of mine were like; but presently we all

came to a long room with a long table, where nineteen lists of

indictments and nineteen pieces of blotting paper were set alongside

nineteen pens. We did not, I recollect, speak much to one another, but

sat down, and studied those nineteen lists. We had eighty-seven cases on

which to pronounce whether the bill was true or no; and the clerk assured

us we should get through them in two days at most. Over the top of these

indictments I regarded my eighteen fellows. There was in me a hunger of

inquiry, as to what they thought about this business; and a sort of

sorrowful affection for them, as if we were all a ship's company bound on

some strange and awkward expedition. I wondered, till I thought my

wonder must be coming through my eyes, whether they had the same curious

sensation that I was feeling, of doing something illegitimate, which I

had not been born to do, together with a sense of self-importance, a sort

of unholy interest in thus dealing with the lives of my fellow men. And

slowly, watching them, I came to the conclusion that I need not wonder.

All with the exception perhaps of two, a painter and a Jew looked such

good citizens. I became gradually sure that they were not troubled with

the lap and wash of speculation; unclogged by any devastating sense of

unity; pure of doubt, and undefiled by an uneasy conscience.

But now they began to bring us in the evidence. They brought it quickly.

And at first we looked at it, whatever it was, with a sort of solemn

excitement. Were we not arbiters of men's fates, purifiers of Society,

more important by far than Judge or Common Jury? For if we did not bring

in a true bill there was an end; the accused would be discharged.

We set to work, slowly at first, then faster and still faster, bringing

in true bills; and after every one making a mark in our lists so that we

might know where we were. We brought in true bills for burglary, and

false pretences, larceny, and fraud; we brought them in for manslaughter,

rape, and arson. When we had ten or so, two of us would get up and bear

them away down to the Court below and lay them before the Judge. "Thank

you, gentlemen!" he would say, or words to that effect; and we would go

up again, and go on bringing in true bills. I noticed that at the

evidence of each fresh bill we looked with a little less excitement, and

a little less solemnity, making every time a shorter tick and a shorter

note in the margin of our lists. All the bills we had--fifty-seven--we

brought in true. And the morning and the afternoon made that day, till we

rested and went to our homes.

Next day we were all back in our places at the appointed hour, and, not

greeting each other much, at once began to bring in bills. We brought

them in, not quite so fast, as though some lurking megrim, some microbe

of dissatisfaction with ourselves was at work within us. It was as if we

wanted to throw one out, as if we felt our work too perfect. And

presently it came. A case of defrauding one Sophie Liebermann, or

Laubermann, or some such foreign name, by giving her one of those

five-pound Christmas-card banknotes just then in fashion, and receiving

from her, as she alleged, three real sovereigns change. There was a

certain piquancy about the matter, and I well remember noticing how we

sat a little forward and turned in our seats when they brought in the

prosecutrix to give evidence. Pale, self-possessed, dressed in black, and

rather comely, neither brazen nor furtive, speaking but poor English, her

broad, matter-of-fact face, with its wide-set grey eyes and thickish nose

and lips, made on me, I recollect, an impression of rather stupid

honesty. I do not think they had told us in so many words what her

calling was, nor do I remember whether she actually disclosed it, but by

our demeanour I could tell that we had all realized what was the nature

of the service rendered to the accused, in return for which he had given

her this worthless note. In her rather guttural but pleasant voice she

answered all our questions--not very far from tears, I think, but saved

by native stolidity, and perhaps a little by the fear that purifiers of

Society might not be the proper audience for emotion. When she had left

us we recalled the detective, and still, as it were, touching the

delicate matter with the tips of our tongues, so as not, being men of the

world, to seem biassed against anything, we definitely elicited from him

her profession and these words: "If she's speaking the truth, gentlemen;

but, as you know, these women, they don't always, specially the foreign

ones!" When he, too, had gone, we looked at each other in unwonted

silence. None of us quite liked, it seemed, to be first to speak. Then

our foreman said: "There's no doubt, I think, that he gave her the

note--mean trick, of course, but we can't have him on that alone--bit too

irregular--no consideration in law, I take it."

He smiled a little at our smiles, and then went on: "The question,

gentlemen, really seems to be, are we to take her word that she actually

gave him change?" Again, for quite half a minute; we were silent, and

then, the fattest one of us said, suddenly: "Very dangerous--goin' on the

word of these women."

And at once, as if he had released something in our souls, we all (save

two or three) broke out. It wouldn't do! It wasn't safe! Seeing what

these women were! It was exactly as if, without word said, we had each

been swearing the other to some secret compact to protect Society. As if

we had been whispering to each other something like this: "These

women--of course, we need them, but for all that we can't possibly

recognise them as within the Law; we can't do that without endangering

the safety of every one of us. In this matter we are trustees for all

men--indeed, even for ourselves, for who knows at what moment we might

not ourselves require their services, and it would be exceedingly awkward

if their word were considered the equal of our own!" Not one of us,

certainly said anything so crude as this; none the less did many of us

feel it. Then the foreman, looking slowly round the table, said: "Well,

gentlemen, I think we are all agreed to throw out this bill"; and all,

except the painter, the Jew, and one other, murmured: "Yes." And, as

though, in throwing out this bill we had cast some trouble off our minds,

we went on with the greater speed, bringing in true bills. About two

o'clock we finished, and trooped down to the Court to be released. On

the stairway the Jew came close, and, having examined me a little sharply

with his velvety slits of eyes, as if to see that he was not making a

mistake, said: "Ith fonny--we bring in eighty thix bills true, and one we

throw out, and the one we throw out we know it to be true, and the

dirtieth job of the whole lot. Ith fonny!" "Yes," I answered him, "our

sense of respectability does seem excessive." But just then we reached

the Court, where, in his red robe and grey wig, with his clear-cut,

handsome face, the judge seemed to shine and radiate, like sun through

gloom. "I thank you, gentlemen," he said, in a voice courteous and a

little mocking, as though he had somewhere seen us before: "I thank you

for the way in which you have performed your duties. I have not the

pleasure of assigning to you anything for your services except the

privilege of going over a prison, where you will be able to see what sort

of existence awaits many of those to whose cases you have devoted so much

of your valuable time. You are released, gentlemen."

Looking at each, other a little hurriedly, and not taking too much

farewell, for fear of having to meet again, we separated.

I was, then, free--free of the injunction of that piece of paper reposing

in my pocket. Yet its influence was still upon me. I did not hurry

away, but lingered in the courts, fascinated by the notion that the fate

of each prisoner had first passed through my hands. At last I made an

effort, and went out into the corridor. There I passed a woman whose

figure seemed familiar. She was sitting with her hands in her lap

looking straight before her, pale-faced and not uncomely, with thickish

mouth and nose--the woman whose bill we had thrown out. Why was she

sitting there? Had she not then realised that we had quashed her claim;

or was she, like myself, kept here by mere attraction of the Law?

Following I know not what impulse, I said: "Your case was dismissed,

wasn't it?" She looked up at me stolidly, and a tear, which had

evidently been long gathering, dropped at the movement. "I do nod know;

I waid to see," she said in her thick voice; "I tink there has been

mistake." My face, no doubt, betrayed something of my sentiments about

her case, for the thick tears began rolling fast down her pasty cheeks,

and her pent-up feeling suddenly flowed forth in words: "I work 'ard;

Gott! how I work hard! And there gomes dis liddle beastly man, and rob

me. And they say: 'Ah! yes; but you are a bad woman, we don' trust

you--you speak lie.' But I speak druth, I am nod a bad woman--I gome

from Hamburg." "Yes, yes," I murmured; "yes, yes." "I do not know this

country well, sir. I speak bad English. Is that why they do not drust

my word?" She was silent for a moment, searching my face, then broke out

again: "It is all 'ard work in my profession, I make very liddle, I

cannot afford to be rob. Without the men I cannod make my living, I must

drust them--and they rob me like this, it is too 'ard." And the slow

tears rolled faster and faster from her eyes on to her hands and her

black lap. Then quietly, and looking for a moment singularly like a big,

unhappy child, she asked: "Will you blease dell me, sir, why they will

not give me the law of that dirty little man?"

I knew--and too well; but I could not tell her.

"You see," I said, "it's just a case of your word against his." "Oh! no;

but," she said eagerly, "he give me the note--I would not have taken it

if I 'ad not thought it good, would I? That is sure, isn't it? But five

pounds it is not my price. It must that I give 'im change! Those

gentlemen that heard my case, they are men of business, they must know

that it is not my price. If I could tell the judge--I think he is a man

of business too he would know that too, for sure. I am not so young. I

am not so veree beautiful as all that; he must see, mustn't he, sir?"

At my wits' end how to answer that most strange question, I stammered

out: "But, you know, your profession is outside the law."

At that a slow anger dyed her face. She looked down; then, suddenly

lifting one of her dirty, ungloved hands, she laid it on her breast with

the gesture of one baring to me the truth in her heart. "I am not a bad

woman," she said: "Dat beastly little man, he do the same as me--I am

free-woman, I am not a slave bound to do the same to-morrow night, no

more than he. Such like him make me what I am; he have all the pleasure,

I have all the work. He give me noding--he rob my poor money, and he

make me seem to strangers a bad woman. Oh, dear! I am not happy!"

The impulse I had been having to press on her the money, died within me;

I felt suddenly it would be another insult. From the movement of her

fingers about her heart I could not but see that this grief of hers was

not about the money. It was the inarticulate outburst of a bitter sense

of deep injustice; of all the dumb wondering at her own fate that went

about with her behind that broad stolid face and bosom. This loss of the

money was but a symbol of the furtive, hopeless insecurity she lived with

day and night, now forced into the light, for herself and all the world

to see. She felt it suddenly a bitter, unfair thing. This beastly

little man did not share her insecurity. None of us shared it--none of

us, who had brought her down to this. And, quite unable to explain to

her how natural and proper it all was, I only murmured: "I am sorry,

awfully sorry," and fled away.

PANEL II

It was just a week later when, having for passport my Grand Jury summons,

I presented myself at that prison where we had the privilege of seeing

the existence to which we had assisted so many of the eighty-six.

"I'm afraid," I said to the guardian of the gate, "that I am rather late

in availing myself--the others, no doubt----?"

"Not at all, sir," he said, smiling. "You're the first, and if you'll

excuse me, I think you'll be the last. Will you wait in here while I

send for the chief warder to take you over?"

He showed me then to what he called the Warder's Library--an iron-barred

room, more bare and brown than any I had seen since I left school. While

I stood there waiting and staring out into the prison court-yard, there

came, rolling and rumbling in, a Black Maria. It drew up with a clatter,

and I saw through the barred door the single prisoner--a young girl of

perhaps eighteen--dressed in rusty black. She was resting her forehead

against a bar and looking out, her quick, narrow dark eyes taking in her

new surroundings with a sort of sharp, restless indifference; and her

pale, thin-upped, oval face quite expressionless. Behind those bars she

seemed to me for all the world like a little animal of the cat tribe

being brought in to her Zoo. Me she did not see, but if she had I felt

she would not shrink--only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she

was giving all else. The policeman on the step behind had disappeared at

once, and the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round, began

to gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him, and he

smiled back; a large man; not unkindly. Then he returned to his horses,

and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the bars, just

staring out. Watching her like that, unseen, I seemed to be able to see

right through that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask. I seemed to know that

little creature through and through, as one knows anything that one

surprises off its guard, sunk in its most private moods. I seemed to see

her little restless, furtive, utterly unmoral soul, so stripped of all

defence, as if she had taken it from her heart and handed it out to me.

I saw that she was one of those whose hands slip as indifferently into

others' pockets as into their own; incapable of fidelity, and incapable

of trusting; quick as cats, and as devoid of application; ready to

scratch, ready to purr, ready to scratch again; quick to change, and

secretly as unchangeable as a little pebble. And I thought: "Here we

are, taking her to the Zoo (by no means for the first time, if demeanour

be any guide), and we shall put her in a cage, and make her sew, and give

her good books which she will not read; and she will sew, and walk up and

down, until we let her out; then she will return to her old haunts, and

at once go prowling and do exactly the same again, what ever it was,

until we catch her and lock her up once more. And in this way we shall

go on purifying Society until she dies." And I thought: If indeed she had

been created cat in body as well as in soul, we should not have treated

her thus, but should have said: 'Go on, little cat, you scratch us

sometimes, you steal often, you are as sensual as the night. All this we

cannot help. It is your nature. So were you made--we know you cannot

change--you amuse us! Go on, little cat!' Would it not then be better,

and less savoury of humbug if we said the same to her whose cat-soul has

chanced into this human shape? For assuredly she will but pilfer, and

scratch a little, and be mildly vicious, in her little life, and do no

desperate harm, having but poor capacity for evil behind that petty,

thin-upped mask. What is the good of all this padlock business for such

as she; are we not making mountains out of her mole hills? Where is our

sense of proportion, and our sense of humour? Why try to alter the make

and shape of Nature with our petty chisels? Or, if we must take care of

her, to save ourselves, in the name of Heaven let us do it in a better

way than this! And suddenly I remembered that I was a Grand Juryman, a

purifier of Society, who had brought her bill in true; and, that I might

not think these thoughts unworthy of a good citizen, I turned my eyes

away from her and took up my list of indictments. Yes, there she was, at

least so I decided: Number 42, "Pilson, Jenny: Larceny, pocket-picking."

And I turned my memory back to the evidence about her case, but I could

not remember a single word. In the margin I had noted: "Incorrigible

from a child up; bad surroundings." And a mad impulse came over me to go

back to my window and call through the bars to her: "Jenny Pilson! Jenny

Pilson! It was I who bred you and surrounded you with evil! It was I

who caught you for being what I made you! I brought your bill in true!

I judged you, and I caged you! Jenny Pilson! Jenny Pilson!" But just as

I reached the window, the door of my waiting-room was fortunately opened,

and a voice said: "Now, sir; at your service!"...

I sat again in that scoop of the shore by the long rolling seas, burying

in the sand the piece of paper which had summoned me away to my Grand

Jury; and the same thoughts came to me with the breaking of the waves

that had come to me before: How, in every wave was a particle that had

known the shore of every land; and in each sparkle of the hot sunlight

stealing up that bright water into the sky, the microcosm of all change

and of all unity!

1912.

GONE

Not possible to conceive of rarer beauty than that which clung about the

summer day three years ago when first we had the news of the poor Herds.

Loveliness was a net of golden filaments in which the world was caught.

It was gravity itself, so tranquil; and it was a sort of intoxicating

laughter. From the top field that we crossed to go down to their

cottage, all the far sweep of those outstretched wings of beauty could be

seen. Very wonderful was the poise of the sacred bird, that moved

nowhere but in our hearts. The lime-tree scent was just stealing out

into air for some days already bereft of the scent of hay; and the sun

was falling to his evening home behind our pines and beeches. It was no

more than radiant warm. And, as we went, we wondered why we had not been

told before that Mrs. Herd was so very ill. It was foolish to

wonder--these people do not speak of suffering till it is late. To

speak, when it means what this meant loss of wife and mother--was to

flatter reality too much. To be healthy, or--die! That is their creed.

To go on till they drop--then very soon pass away! What room for states

between--on their poor wage, in their poor cottages?

We crossed the mill-stream in the hollow--to their white, thatched

dwelling; silent, already awed, almost resentful of this so-varying

Scheme of Things. At the gateway Herd himself was standing, just in from

his work. For work in the country does not wait on illness--even death

claims from its onlookers but a few hours, birth none at all, and it is

as well; for what must be must, and in work alone man rests from grief.

Sorrow and anxiety had made strange alteration already in Herd's face.

Through every crevice of the rough, stolid mask the spirit was peeping, a

sort of quivering suppliant, that seemed to ask all the time: "Is it

true?" A regular cottager's figure, this of Herd's--a labourer of these

parts--strong, slow, but active, with just a touch of the untamed

somewhere, about the swing and carriage of him, about the strong jaw, and

wide thick-lipped mouth; just that something independent, which, in great

variety, clings to the natives of these still remote, half-pagan valleys

by the moor.

We all moved silently to the lee of the outer wall, so that our voices

might not carry up to the sick woman lying there under the eaves, almost

within hand reach. "Yes, sir." "No, sir." "Yes, ma'am." This, and the

constant, unforgettable supplication of his eyes, was all that came from

him; yet he seemed loath to let us go, as though he thought we had some

mysterious power to help him--the magic, perhaps, of money, to those who

have none. Grateful at our promise of another doctor, a specialist, he

yet seemed with his eyes to say that he knew that such were only

embroideries of Fate. And when we had wrung his hand and gone, we heard

him coming after us: His wife had said she would like to see us, please.

Would we come up?

An old woman and Mrs. Herd's sister were in the sitting-room; they showed

us to the crazy, narrow stairway. Though we lived distant but four

hundred yards of a crow's flight, we had never seen Mrs. Herd before, for

that is the way of things in this land of minding one's own business--a

slight, dark, girlish-looking woman, almost quite refined away, and with

those eyes of the dying, where the spirit is coming through, as it only

does when it knows that all is over except just the passing. She lay in

a double bed, with clean white sheets. A white-washed room, so low that

the ceiling almost touched our heads, some flowers in a bowl, the small

lattice window open. Though it was hot in there, it was better far than

the rooms of most families in towns, living on a wage of twice as much;

for here was no sign of defeat in decency or cleanliness. In her face,

as in poor Herd's, was that same strange mingling of resigned despair and

almost eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint. Yet, trying not to

disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery: What was the good, the

kindness, in making this poor bird flutter still with hope against the

bars, when fast prison had so surely closed in round her? But what else

could we do? We could not give her those glib assurances that naive

souls make so easily to others concerning their after state.

Secretly, I think, we knew that her philosophy of calm reality, that

queer and unbidden growing tranquillity which precedes death, was nearer

to our own belief, than would be any gilt-edged orthodoxy; but

nevertheless (such is the strength of what is expected), we felt it

dreadful that we could not console her with the ordinary presumptions.

"You mustn't give up hope," we kept on saying: "The new doctor will do a

lot for you; he's a specialist--a very clever man."

And she kept on answering: "Yes, sir." "Yes, ma'am." But still her eyes

went on asking, as if there were something else she wanted. And then to

one of us came an inspiration:

"You mustn't let your husband worry about expense. That will be all

right."

She smiled then, as if the chief cloud on her soul had been the thought

of the arrears her illness and death would leave weighing on him with

whom she had shared this bed ten years and more. And with that smile

warming the memory of those spirit-haunted eyes, we crept down-stairs

again, and out into the fields.

It was more beautiful than ever, just touched already with evening

mystery--it was better than ever to be alive. And the immortal wonder

that has haunted man since first he became man, and haunts, I think, even

the animals--the unanswerable question,--why joy and beauty must ever be

walking hand in hand with ugliness and pain haunted us across those

fields of life and loveliness. It was all right, no doubt, even

reasonable, since without dark there is no light. It was part of that

unending sum whose answer is not given; the merest little swing of the

great pendulum! And yet----! To accept this violent contrast without a

sigh of revolt, without a question! No sirs, it was not so jolly as all

that! That she should be dying there at thirty, of a creeping malady

which she might have checked, perhaps, if she had not had too many things

to do for the children and husband, to do anything for herself--if she

had not been forced to hold the creed: Be healthy, or die! This was no

doubt perfectly explicable and in accordance with the Supreme Equation;

yet we, enjoying life, and health, and ease of money, felt horror and

revolt on, this evening of such beauty. Nor at the moment did we derive

great comfort from the thought that life slips in and out of sheath, like

sun-sparks on water, and that of all the cloud of summer midges dancing

in the last gleam, not one would be alive to-morrow.

It was three evenings later that we heard uncertain footfalls on the

flagstones of the verandah, then a sort of brushing sound against the

wood of the long, open window. Drawing aside the curtain, one of us

looked out. Herd was standing there in the bright moonlight, bareheaded,

with roughened hair. He came in, and seeming not to know quite where he

went, took stand by the hearth, and putting up his dark hand, gripped the

mantelshelf. Then, as if recollecting himself, he said: "Gude evenin',

sir; beg pardon, M'm." No more for a full minute; but his hand, taking

some little china thing, turned it over and over without ceasing, and

down his broken face tears ran. Then, very suddenly, he said: "She's

gone." And his hand turned over and over that little china thing, and

the tears went on rolling down. Then, stumbling, and swaying like a man

in drink, he made his way out again into the moonlight. We watched him

across the lawn and path, and through the gate, till his footfalls died

out there in the field, and his figure was lost in the black shadow of

the holly hedge.

And the night was so beautiful, so utterly, glamourously beautiful, with

its star-flowers, and its silence, and its trees clothed in moonlight.

All was tranquil as a dream of sleep. But it was long before our hearts,

wandering with poor Herd, would let us remember that she had slipped away

into so beautiful a dream.

The dead do not suffer from their rest in beauty. But the living---!

1911.

THRESHING

When the drone of the thresher breaks through the autumn sighing of trees

and wind, or through that stillness of the first frost, I get restless

and more restless, till, throwing down my pen, I have gone out to see.

For there is nothing like the sight of threshing for making one feel

good--not in the sense of comfort, but at heart. There, under the pines

and the already leafless elms and beech-trees, close to the great stacks,

is the big, busy creature, with its small black puffing engine astern;

and there, all around it, is that conglomeration of unsentimental labour

which invests all the crises of farm work with such fascination. The

crew of the farm is only five all told, but to-day they are fifteen, and

none strangers, save the owners of the travelling thresher.

They are working without respite and with little speech, not at all as if

they had been brought together for the benefit of some one else's corn,

but as though they, one and all, had a private grudge against Time and a

personal pleasure in finishing this job, which, while it lasts, is

bringing them extra pay and most excellent free feeding. Just as after a

dilatory voyage a crew will brace themselves for the run in, recording

with sudden energy their consciousness of triumph over the elements, so

on a farm the harvests of hay and corn, sheep-shearing, and threshing

will bring out in all a common sentiment, a kind of sporting energy, a

defiant spurt, as it were, to score off Nature; for it is only a

philosopher here and there among them, I think, who sees that Nature is

eager to be scored off in this fashion, being anxious that some one

should eat her kindly fruits.

With ceremonial as grave as that which is at work within the thresher

itself, the tasks have been divided. At the root of all things,

pitchforking from the stack, stands--the farmer, moustached, and always

upright was he not in the Yeomanry?--dignified in a hard black hat, no

waistcoat, and his working coat so ragged that it would never cling to

him but for pure affection. Between him and the body of the machine are

five more pitch forks, directing the pale flood of raw material. There,

amongst them, is poor Herd, still so sad from his summer loss, plodding

doggedly away. To watch him even now makes one feel how terrible is that

dumb grief which has never learned to moan. And there is George Yeoford,

almost too sober; and Murdon plying his pitchfork with a supernatural

regularity that cannot quite dim his queer brigand's face of dark, soft

gloom shot with sudden humours, his soft, dark corduroys and battered

hat. Occasionally he stops, and taking off that hat, wipes his

corrugated brow under black hair, and seems to brood over his own

regularity.

Down here, too, where I stand, each separate function of the thresher has

its appointed slave. Here Cedric rakes the chaff pouring from the side

down into the chaff-shed. Carting the straw that streams from the

thresher bows, are Michelmore and Neck--the little man who cannot read,

but can milk and whistle the hearts out of his cows till they follow him

like dogs. At the thresher's stern is Morris, the driver, selected

because of that utter reliability which radiates from his broad, handsome

face. His part is to attend the sacking of the three kinds of grain for

ever sieving out. He murmurs: "Busy work, sir!" and opens a little door

to show me how "the machinery does it all," holding a sack between his

knees and some string in his white teeth. Then away goes the sack--four

bushels, one hundred and sixty pounds of "genuines, seconds, or

seed"--wheeled by Cedric on a little trolley thing, to where

George-the-Gaul or Jim-the-Early-Saxon is waiting to bear it on his back

up the stone steps into the corn-chamber.

It has been raining in the night; the ground is a churn of straw and mud,

and the trees still drip; but now there is sunlight, a sweet air, and

clear sky, wine-coloured through the red, naked, beechtwigs tipped with

white untimely buds. Nothing can be more lovely than this late autumn

day, so still, save for the droning of the thresher and the constant

tinny chuckle of the grey, thin-headed Guinea-fowl, driven by this

business away from their usual haunts.

And soon the, feeling that I knew would come begins creeping over me, the

sense of an extraordinary sanity in this never-ceasing harmonious labour

pursued in the autumn air faintly perfumed with wood-smoke, with the

scent of chaff, and whiffs from that black puffing-Billy; the sense that

there is nothing between this clean toil--not too hard but hard

enough--and the clean consumption of its clean results; the sense that

nobody except myself is in the least conscious of how sane it all is.

The brains of these sane ones are all too busy with the real affairs of

life, the disposition of their wages, anticipation of dinner, some girl,

some junketing, some wager, the last rifle match, and, more than all,

with that pleasant rhythmic nothingness, companion of the busy swing and

play of muscles, which of all states is secretly most akin to the deep

unconsciousness of life itself. Thus to work in the free air for the good

of all and the hurt of none, without worry or the breath of

acrimony--surely no phase of human life so nears the life of the truly

civilised community--the life of a hive of bees. Not one of these

working so sanely--unless it be Morris, who will spend his Sunday

afternoon on some high rock just watching sunlight and shadow drifting on

the moors--not one, I think, is distraught by perception of his own

sanity, by knowledge of how near he is to Harmony, not even by

appreciation of the still radiance of this day, or its innumerable fine

shades of colour. It is all work, and no moody consciousness--all work,

and will end in sleep.

I leave them soon, and make my way up the stone steps to the "corn

chamber," where tranquillity is crowned. In the whitewashed room the

corn lies in drifts and ridges, three to four feet deep, all silvery-dun,

like some remote sand desert, lifeless beneath the moon. Here it lies,

and into it, staggering under the sacks, George-the-Gaul and

Jim-the-Early Saxon tramp up to their knees, spill the sacks over their

heads, and out again; and above where their feet have plunged the patient

surface closes again, smooth. And as I stand there in the doorway,

looking at that silvery corn drift, I think of the whole process, from

seed sown to the last sieving into this tranquil resting-place. I think

of the slow, dogged ploughman, with the crows above him on the wind; of

the swing of the sower's arm, dark up against grey sky on the steep

field. I think of the seed snug-burrowing for safety, and its mysterious

ferment under the warm Spring rain, of the soft green shoots tapering up

so shyly toward the first sun, and hardening in air to thin wiry stalk.

I think of the unnumerable tiny beasts that have jangled in that pale

forest; of the winged blue jewels of butterfly risen from it to hover on

the wild-rustling blades; of that continual music played there by the

wind; of the chicory and poppy flowers that have been its lights-o' love,

as it grew tawny and full of life, before the appointed date when it

should return to its captivity. I think of that slow-travelling hum and

swish which laid it low, of the gathering to stack, and the long waiting

under the rustle and drip of the sheltering trees, until yesterday the

hoot of the thresher blew, and there began the falling into this dun

silvery peace. Here it will lie with the pale sun narrowly filtering in

on it, and by night the pale moon, till slowly, week by week, it is

stolen away, and its ridges and drifts sink and sink, and the beasts have

eaten it all....

When the dusk is falling, I go out to them again. They have nearly

finished now; the chaff in the chaff-shed is mounting hillock-high; only

the little barley stack remains unthreshed. Mrs. George-the-Gaul is

standing with a jug to give drink to the tired ones. Some stars are

already netted in the branches of the pines; the Guinea-fowl are silent.

But still the harmonious thresher hums and showers from three sides the

straw, the chaff, the corn; and the men fork, and rake, and cart, and

carry, sleep growing in their muscles, silence on their tongues, and the

tranquillity of the long day nearly ended in their souls. They will go

on till it is quite dark.

1911.

THAT OLD-TIME PLACE

"Yes, suh--here we are at that old-time place!" And our dark driver drew

up his little victoria gently.

Through the open doorway, into a dim, cavernous, ruined house of New

Orleans we passed. The mildew and dirt, the dark denuded dankness of

that old hostel, rotting down with damp and time!

And our guide, the tall, thin, grey-haired dame, who came forward with

such native ease and moved before us, touching this fungused wall, that

rusting stairway, and telling, as it were, no one in her soft, slow

speech, things that any one could see--what a strange and fitting figure!

Before the smell of the deserted, oozing rooms, before that old creature

leading us on and on, negligent of all our questions, and talking to the

air, as though we were not, we felt such discomfort that we soon made to

go out again into such freshness as there was on that day of dismal heat.

Then realising, it seemed, that she was losing us, our old guide turned;

for the first time looking in our faces, she smiled, and said in her

sweet, weak voice, like the sound from the strings of a spinet long

unplayed on: "Don' you wahnd to see the dome-room: an' all the other

rooms right here, of this old-time place?"

Again those words! We had not the hearts to disappoint her. And as we

followed on and on, along the mouldering corridors and rooms where the

black peeling papers hung like stalactites, the dominance of our senses

gradually dropped from us, and with our souls we saw its soul--the soul

of this old-time place; this mustering house of the old South, bereft of

all but ghosts and the grey pigeons niched in the rotting gallery round a

narrow courtyard open to the sky.

"This is the dome-room, suh and lady; right over the slave-market it is.

Here they did the business of the State--sure; old-time heroes up therein

the roof--Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Davis, Lee--there they are!

All gone--now! Yes, suh!"

A fine--yea, even a splendid room, of great height, and carved grandeur,

with hand-wrought bronze sconces and a band of metal bordering, all

blackened with oblivion. And the faces of those old heroes encircling

that domed ceiling were blackened too, and scarred with damp, beyond

recognition. Here, beneath their gaze, men had banqueted and danced and

ruled. The pride and might and vivid strength of things still fluttered

their uneasy flags of spirit, moved disherited wings! Those old-time

feasts and grave discussions--we seemed to see them printed on the thick

air, imprisoned in this great chamber built above their dark foundations.

The pride and the might and the vivid strength of things--gone, all gone!

We became conscious again of that soft, weak voice.

"Not hearing very well, suh, I have it all printed, lady--beautifully

told here--yes, indeed!"

She was putting cards into our hands; then, impassive, maintaining ever

her impersonal chant, the guardian of past glory led us on.

"Now we shall see the slave-market--downstairs, underneath! It's wet for

the lady the water comes in now yes, suh!"

On the crumbling black and white marble floorings the water indeed was

trickling into pools. And down in the halls there came to us

wandering--strangest thing that ever strayed through deserted grandeur--a

brown, broken horse, lean, with a sore flank and a head of tremendous

age. It stopped and gazed at us, as though we might be going to give it

things to eat, then passed on, stumbling over the ruined marbles. For a

moment we had thought him ghost--one of the many. But he was not, since

his hoofs sounded. The scrambling clatter of them had died out into

silence before we came to that dark, crypt-like chamber whose marble

columns were ringed in iron, veritable pillars of foundation. And then

we saw that our old guide's hands were full of newspapers. She struck a

match; they caught fire and blazed. Holding high that torch, she said:

"See! Up there's his name, above where he stood. The auctioneer. Oh

yes, indeed! Here's where they sold them!"

Below that name, decaying on the wall, we had the slow, uncanny feeling

of some one standing there in the gleam and flicker from that paper

torch. For a moment the whole shadowy room seemed full of forms and

faces. Then the torch lied out, and our old guide, pointing through an

archway with the blackened stump of it, said:

"'Twas here they kept them indeed, yes!"

We saw before us a sort of vault, stone-built, and low, and long. The

light there was too dim for us to make out anything but walls and heaps

of rusting scrap-iron cast away there and mouldering own. But trying to

pierce that darkness we became conscious, as it seemed, of innumerable

eyes gazing, not at us, but through the archway where we stood;

innumerable white eyeballs gleaming out of blackness. From behind us

came a little laugh. It floated past through the archway, toward those

eyes. Who was that? Who laughed in there? The old South itself--that

incredible, fine, lost soul! That "old-time" thing of old ideals,

blindfolded by its own history! That queer proud blend of simple

chivalry and tyranny, of piety and the abhorrent thing! Who was it

laughed there in the old slave-market--laughed at these white eyeballs

glaring from out of the blackness of their dark cattle-pen? What poor

departed soul in this House of Melancholy? But there was no ghost when

we turned to look--only our old guide with her sweet smile.

"Yes, suh. Here they all came--'twas the finest hotel--before the

war-time; old Southern families--buyin' an' sellin' their property. Yes,

ma'am, very interesting! This way! And here were the bells to all the

rooms. Broken, you see--all broken!"

And rather quickly we passed away, out of that "old-time place"; where

something had laughed, and the drip, drip, drip of water down the walls

was as the sound of a spirit grieving.

1912.

ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS

On that New Year's morning when I drew up the blind it was still nearly

dark, but for the faintest pink flush glancing out there on the horizon

of black water. The far shore of the river's mouth was just soft dusk;

and the dim trees below me were in perfect stillness. There was no lap of

water. And then--I saw her, drifting in on the tide-the little ship,

passaging below me, a happy ghost. Like no thing of this world she came,

ending her flight, with sail-wings closing and her glowing lantern eyes.

There was I know not what of stealthy joy about her thus creeping in to

the unexpecting land. And I wished she would never pass, but go on

gliding by down there for ever with her dark ropes, and her bright

lanterns, and her mysterious felicity, so that I might have for ever in

my heart the blessed feeling she brought me, coming like this out of that

great mystery the sea. If only she need not change to solidity, but ever

be this visitor from the unknown, this sacred bird, telling with her

half-seen, trailing-down plume--sails the story of uncharted wonder. If

only I might go on trembling, as I was, with the rapture of all I did not

know and could not see, yet felt pressing against me and touching my face

with its lips! To think of her at anchor in cold light was like

flinging-to a door in the face of happiness. And just then she struck

her bell; the faint silvery far-down sound fled away before her, and to

every side, out into the utter hush, to discover echo. But nothing

answered, as if fearing to break the spell of her coming, to brush with

reality the dark sea dew from her sail-wings. But within me, in

response, there began the song of all unknown things; the song so

tenuous, so ecstatic, that seems to sweep and quiver across such thin

golden strings, and like an eager dream dies too soon. The song of the

secret-knowing wind that has peered through so great forests and over

such wild sea; blown on so many faces, and in the jungles of the grass

the song of all that the wind has seen and felt. The song of lives that

I should never live; of the loves that I should never love singlng to me

as though I should! And suddenly I felt that I could not bear my little

ship of dreams to grow hard and grey, her bright lanterns drowned in the

cold light, her dark ropes spidery and taut, her sea-wan sails all

furled, and she no more en chanted; and turning away I let fall the

curtain.

II

Then what happens to the moon? She, who, shy and veiled, slips out

before dusk to take the air of heaven, wandering timidly among the

columned clouds, and fugitive from the staring of the sun; she, who, when

dusk has come, rules the sentient night with such chaste and icy

spell--whither and how does she retreat?

I came on her one morning--I surprised her. She was stealing into a dark

wintry wood, and five little stars were chasing her. She was

orange-hooded, a light-o'-love dismissed--unashamed and unfatigued,

having taken--all. And she was looking back with her almond eyes, across

her dark-ivory shoulder, at Night where he still lay drowned in the sleep

she had brought him. What a strange, slow, mocking look! So might

Aphrodite herself have looked back at some weary lover, remembering the

fire of his first embrace. Insatiate, smiling creature, slipping down to

the rim of the world to her bath in the sweet waters of dawn, whence

emerging, pure as a water lily, she would float in the cool sky till

evening came again! And just then she saw me looking, and hid behind a

holm-oak tree; but I could still see the gleam of one shoulder and her

long narrow eyes pursuing me. I went up to the tree and parted its dark

boughs to take her; but she had slipped behind another. I called to her

to stand, if only for one moment. But she smiled and went slip ping on,

and I ran thrusting through the wet bushes, leaping the fallen trunks.

The scent of rotting leaves disturbed by my feet leaped out into the

darkness, and birds, surprised, fluttered away. And still I ran--she

slipping ever further into the grove, and ever looking back at me. And I

thought: But I will catch you yet, you nymph of perdition! The wood will

soon be passed, you will have no cover then! And from her eyes, and the

scanty gleam of her flying limbs, I never looked away, not even when I

stumbled or ran against tree trunks in my blind haste. And at every

clearing I flew more furiously, thinking to seize all of her with my gaze

before she could cross the glade; but ever she found some little low

tree, some bush of birch ungrown, or the far top branches of the next

grove to screen her flying body and preserve allurement. And all the

time she was dipping, dipping to the rim of the world. And then I

tripped; but, as I rose, I saw that she had lingered for me; her long

sliding eyes were full, it seemed to me, of pity, as if she would have

liked for me to have enjoyed the sight of her. I stood still,

breathless, thinking that at last she would consent; but flinging back,

up into the air, one dark-ivory arm, she sighed and vanished. And the

breath of her sigh stirred all the birch-tree twigs just coloured with

the dawn. Long I stood in that thicket gazing at the spot where she had

leapt from me over the edge of the world-my heart quivering.

III

We embarked on the estuary steamer that winter morning just as daylight

came full. The sun was on the wing scattering little white clouds, as an

eagle might scatter doves. They scurried up before him with their broken

feathers tipped and tinged with gold. In the air was a touch of frost,

and a smoky mist-drift clung here and there above the reeds, blurring the

shores of the lagoon so that we seemed to be steaming across boundless

water, till some clump of trees would fling its top out of the fog, then

fall back into whiteness.

And then, in that thick vapour, rounding I suppose some curve, we came

suddenly into we knew not what--all white and moving it was, as if the

mist were crazed; murmuring, too, with a sort of restless beating. We

seemed to be passing through a ghost--the ghost of all the life that had

sprung from this water and its, shores; we seemed to have left reality,

to be travelling through live wonder.

And the fantastic thought sprang into my mind: I have died. This is the

voyage of my soul in the wild. I am in the final wilderness of

spirits--lost in the ghost robe that wraps the earth. There seemed in

all this white murmuration to be millions of tiny hands stretching out to

me, millions of whispering voices, of wistful eyes. I had no fear, but a

curious baked eagerness, the strangest feeling of having lost myself and

become part of this around me; exactly as if my own hands and voice and

eyes had left me and were groping, and whispering, and gazing out there

in the eeriness. I was no longer a man on an estuary steamer, but part

of sentient ghostliness. Nor did I feel unhappy; it seemed as though I

had never been anything but this Bedouin spirit wandering.

We passed through again into the stillness of plain mist, and all those

eerie sensations went, leaving nothing but curiosity to know what this

was that we had traversed. Then suddenly the sun came flaring out, and

we saw behind us thousands and thousands of white gulls dipping,

wheeling, brushing the water with their wings, bewitched with sun and

mist. That was all. And yet that white-winged legion through whom we

had ploughed our way were not, could never be, to me just gulls--there

was more than mere sun-glamour gilding their misty plumes; there was the

wizardry of my past wonder, the enchantment of romance.

1912.

MEMORIES

We set out to meet him at Waterloo Station on a dull day of February--I,

who had owned his impetuous mother, knowing a little what to expect,

while to my companion he would be all original. We stood there waiting

(for the Salisbury train was late), and wondering with a warm,

half-fearful eagerness what sort of new thread Life was going to twine

into our skein. I think our chief dread was that he might have light

eyes--those yellow Chinese eyes of the common, parti-coloured spaniel.

And each new minute of the train's tardiness increased our anxious

compassion: His first journey; his first separation from his mother; this

black two-months' baby! Then the train ran in, and we hastened to look

for him. "Have you a dog for us?"

"A dog! Not in this van. Ask the rearguard."

"Have you a dog for us?"

"That's right. From Salisbury. Here's your wild beast, Sir!"

From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black muzzled nose poking round

at us, and heard a faint hoarse whimpering.

I remember my first thought:

"Isn't his nose too long?"

But to my companion's heart it went at once, because it was swollen from

crying and being pressed against things that he could not see through.

We took him out--soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his four, as yet

not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him. Or, rather, my companion

did, having her head on one side, and a quavering smile; and I regarded

her, knowing that I should thereby get a truer impression of him.

He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor licking

at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's an angel!"

I was not so certain. He seemed hammer-headed, with no eyes at all, and

little connection between his head, his body, and his legs. His ears

were very long, as long as his poor nose; and gleaming down in the

blackness of him I could see the same white star that disgraced his

mother's chest.

Picking him up, we carried him to a four-wheeled cab, and took his muzzle

off. His little dark-brown eyes were resolutely fixed on distance, and

by his refusal to even smell the biscuits we had brought to make him

happy, we knew that the human being had not yet come into a life that had

contained so far only a mother, a wood-shed, and four other soft, wobbly,

black, hammer-headed angels, smelling of themselves, and warmth, and wood

shavings. It was pleasant to feel that to us he would surrender an

untouched love, that is, if he would surrender anything. Suppose he did

not take to us!

And just then something must have stirred in him, for he turned up his

swollen nose and stared at my companion, and a little later rubbed the

dry pinkness of his tongue against my thumb. In that look, and that

unconscious restless lick; he was trying hard to leave unhappiness

behind, trying hard to feel that these new creatures with stroking paws

and queer scents, were his mother; yet all the time he knew, I am sure,

that they were something bigger, more permanently, desperately, his. The

first sense of being owned, perhaps (who knows) of owning, had stirred in

him. He would never again be quite the same unconscious creature.

A little way from the end of our journey we got out and dismissed the

cab. He could not too soon know the scents and pavements of this London

where the chief of his life must pass. I can see now his first bumble

down that wide, back-water of a street, how continually and suddenly he

sat down to make sure of his own legs, how continually he lost our heels.

He showed us then in full perfection what was afterwards to be an

inconvenient--if endearing--characteristic: At any call or whistle he

would look in precisely the opposite direction. How many times all

through his life have I not seen him, at my whistle, start violently and

turn his tail to me, then, with nose thrown searchingly from side to

side, begin to canter toward the horizon.

In that first walk, we met, fortunately, but one vehicle, a brewer's

dray; he chose that moment to attend to the more serious affairs of life,

sitting quietly before the horses' feet and requiring to be moved by

hand. From the beginning he had his dignity, and was extremely difficult

to lift, owing to the length of his middle distance.

What strange feelings must have stirred in his little white soul when he

first smelled carpet! But it was all so strange to him that day--I

doubt if he felt more than I did when I first travelled to my private

school, reading "Tales of a Grandfather," and plied with tracts and

sherry by my 'father's man of business.

That night, indeed, for several nights, he slept with me, keeping me too

warm down my back, and waking me now and then with quaint sleepy

whimperings. Indeed, all through his life he flew a good deal in his

sleep, fighting dogs and seeing ghosts, running after rabbits and thrown

sticks; and to the last one never quite knew whether or no to rouse him

when his four black feet began to jerk and quiver. His dreams were like

our dreams, both good and bad; happy sometimes, sometimes tragic to

weeping point.

He ceased to sleep with me the day we discovered that he was a perfect

little colony, whose settlers were of an active species which I have

never seen again. After that he had many beds, for circumstance ordained

that his life should be nomadic, and it is to this I trace that

philosophic indifference to place or property, which marked him out from

most of his own kind. He learned early that for a black dog with long

silky ears, a feathered tail, and head of great dignity, there was no

home whatsoever, away from those creatures with special scents, who took

liberties with his name, and alone of all created things were privileged

to smack him with a slipper. He would sleep anywhere, so long as it was

in their room, or so close outside it as to make no matter, for it was

with him a principle that what he did not smell did not exist. I would I

could hear again those long rubber-lipped snufflings of recognition

underneath the door, with which each morning he would regale and reassure

a spirit that grew with age more and more nervous and delicate about this

matter of propinquity! For he was a dog of fixed ideas, things stamped

on his mind were indelible; as, for example, his duty toward cats, for

whom he had really a perverse affection, which had led to that first

disastrous moment of his life, when he was brought up, poor bewildered

puppy, from a brief excursion to the kitchen, with one eye closed and his

cheek torn! He bore to his grave that jagged scratch across the eye. It

was in dread of a repetition of this tragedy that he was instructed at

the word "Cats" to rush forward with a special "tow-row-rowing," which he

never used toward any other form of creature. To the end he cherished a

hope that he would reach the cat; but never did; and if he had, we knew

he would only have stood and wagged his tail; but I well remember once,

when he returned, important, from some such sally, how dreadfully my

companion startled a cat-loving friend by murmuring in her most honeyed

voice: "Well, my darling, have you been killing pussies in the garden?"

His eye and nose were impeccable in their sense of form; indeed, he was

very English in that matter: People must be just so; things smell

properly; and affairs go on in the one right way. He could tolerate

neither creatures in ragged clothes, nor children on their hands and

knees, nor postmen, because, with their bags, they swelled-up on one

side, and carried lanterns on their stomachs. He would never let the

harmless creatures pass without religious barks. Naturally a believer in

authority and routine, and distrusting spiritual adventure, he yet had

curious fads that seemed to have nested in him, quite outside of all

principle. He would, for instance, follow neither carriages nor horses,

and if we tried to make him, at once left for home, where he would sit

with nose raised to Heaven, emitting through it a most lugubrious, shrill

noise. Then again, one must not place a stick, a slipper, a glove, or

anything with which he could play, upon one's head--since such an action

reduced him at once to frenzy. For so conservative a dog, his

environment was sadly anarchistic. He never complained in words of our

shifting habits, but curled his head round over his left paw and pressed

his chin very hard against the ground whenever he smelled packing. What

necessity, he seemed continually to be saying, what real necessity is

there for change of any kind whatever? Here we were all together, and

one day was like another, so that I knew where I was--and now you only

know what will happen next; and I--I can't tell you whether I shall be

with you when it happens! What strange, grieving minutes a dog passes at

such times in the underground of his subconsciousness, refusing

realisation, yet all the time only too well divining. Some careless

word, some unmuted compassion in voice, the stealthy wrapping of a pair

of boots, the unaccustomed shutting of a door that ought to be open, the

removal from a down-stair room of an object always there--one tiny thing,

and he knows for certain that he is not going too. He fights against the

knowledge just as we do against what we cannot bear; he gives up hope,

but not effort, protesting in the only way he knows of, and now and then

heaving a great sigh. Those sighs of a dog! They go to the heart so much

more deeply than the sighs of our own kind, because they are utterly

unintended, regardless of effect, emerging from one who, heaving them,

knows not that they have escaped him!

The words: "Yes--going too!" spoken in a certain tone, would call up in

his eyes a still-questioning half-happiness, and from his tail a quiet

flutter, but did not quite serve to put to rest either his doubt or his

feeling that it was all unnecessary--until the cab arrived. Then he

would pour himself out of door or window, and be found in the bottom of

the vehicle, looking severely away from an admiring cabman. Once settled

on our feet he travelled with philosophy, but no digestion.

I think no dog was ever more indifferent to an outside world of human

creatures; yet few dogs have made more conquests--especially among

strange women, through whom, however, he had a habit of looking--very

discouraging. He had, natheless, one or two particular friends, such as

him to whom this book is dedicated, and a few persons whom he knew he had

seen before, but, broadly speaking, there were in his world of men, only

his mistress, and--the almighty.

Each August, till he was six, he was sent for health, and the assuagement

of his hereditary instincts, up to a Scotch shooting, where he carried

many birds in a very tender manner. Once he was compelled by Fate to

remain there nearly a year; and we went up ourselves to fetch him home.

Down the long avenue toward the keeper's cottage we walked: It was high

autumn; there had been frost already, for the ground was fine with red

and yellow leaves; and presently we saw himself coming; professionally

questing among those leaves, and preceding his dear keeper with the

businesslike self-containment of a sportsman; not too fat, glossy as a

raven's wing, swinging his ears and sporran like a little Highlander. We

approached him silently. Suddenly his nose went up from its imagined

trail, and he came rushing at our legs. From him, as a garment drops

from a man, dropped all his strange soberness; he became in a single

instant one fluttering eagerness. He leaped from life to life in one

bound, without hesitation, without regret. Not one sigh, not one look

back, not the faintest token of gratitude or regret at leaving those good

people who had tended him for a whole year, buttered oat-cake for him,

allowed him to choose each night exactly where he would sleep. No, he

just marched out beside us, as close as ever he could get, drawing us on

in spirit, and not even attending to the scents, until the lodge gates

were passed.

It was strictly in accordance with the perversity of things, and

something in the nature of calamity that he had not been ours one year,

when there came over me a dreadful but overmastering aversion from

killing those birds and creatures of which he was so fond as soon as they

were dead. And so I never knew him as a sportsman; for during that first

year he was only an unbroken puppy, tied to my waist for fear of

accidents, and carefully pulling me off every shot. They tell me he

developed a lovely nose and perfect mouth, large enough to hold gingerly

the biggest hare. I well believe it, remembering the qualities of his

mother, whose character, however, in stability he far surpassed. But, as

he grew every year more devoted to dead grouse and birds and rabbits, I

liked them more and more alive; it was the only real breach between us,

and we kept it out of sight. Ah! well; it is consoling to reflect that I

should infallibly have ruined his sporting qualities, lacking that

peculiar habit of meaning what one says, so necessary to keep dogs

virtuous. But surely to have had him with me, quivering and alert, with

his solemn, eager face, would have given a new joy to those crisp

mornings when the hope of wings coming to the gun makes poignant in the

sports man as nothing else will, an almost sensual love of Nature, a

fierce delight in the soft glow of leaves, in the white birch stems and

tracery of sparse twigs against blue sky, in the scents of sap and grass

and gum and heather flowers; stivers the hair of him with keenness for

interpreting each sound, and fills the very fern or moss he kneels on,

the very trunk he leans against, with strange vibration.

Slowly Fate prepares for each of us the religion that lies coiled in our

most secret nerves; with such we cannot trifle, we do not even try! But

how shall a man grudge any one sensations he has so keenly felt? Let

such as have never known those curious delights, uphold the hand of

horror--for me there can be no such luxury. If I could, I would still

perhaps be knowing them; but when once the joy of life in those winged

and furry things has knocked at the very portals of one's spirit, the

thought that by pressing a little iron twig one will rive that joy out of

their vitals, is too hard to bear. Call it aestheticism, squeamishness,

namby-pamby sentimentalism, what you will it is stronger than oneself!

Yes, after one had once watched with an eye that did not merely see, the

thirsty gaping of a slowly dying bird, or a rabbit dragging a broken leg

to a hole where he would lie for hours thinking of the fern to which he

should never more come forth--after that, there was always the following

little matter of arithmetic: Given, that all those who had been shooting

were "good-fair" shots--which, Heaven knew, they never were--they yet

missed one at least in four, and did not miss it very much; so that if

seventy-five things were slain, there were also twenty-five that had been

fired at, and, of those twenty-five, twelve and a half had "gotten it"

somewhere in their bodies, and would "likely" die at their great leisure.

This was the sum that brought about the only cleavage in our lives; and

so, as he grew older, and trying to part from each other we no longer

could, he ceased going to Scotland. But after that I often felt, and

especially when we heard guns, how the best and most secret instincts of

him were being stifled. But what was to be done? In that which was left

of a clay pigeon he would take not the faintest interest--the scent of it

was paltry. Yet always, even in his most cosseted and idle days, he

managed to preserve the grave preoccupation of one professionally

concerned with retrieving things that smell; and consoled himself with

pastimes such as cricket, which he played in a manner highly specialised,

following the ball up the moment it left the bowler's hand, and sometimes

retrieving it before it reached the batsman. When remonstrated with, he

would consider a little, hanging out a pink tongue and looking rather too

eagerly at the ball, then canter slowly out to a sort of forward short

leg. Why he always chose that particular position it is difficult to

say; possibly he could lurk there better than anywhere else, the

batsman's eye not being on him, and the bowler's not too much. As a

fieldsman he was perfect, but for an occasional belief that he was not

merely short leg, but slip, point, midoff, and wicket-keep; and perhaps a

tendency to make the ball a little "jubey." But he worked tremendously,

watching every movement; for he knew the game thoroughly, and seldom

delayed it more than three minutes when he secured the ball. And if that

ball were really lost, then indeed he took over the proceedings with an

intensity and quiet vigour that destroyed many shrubs, and the solemn

satisfaction which comes from being in the very centre of the stage.

But his most passionate delight was swimming in anything except the sea,

for which, with its unpleasant noise and habit of tasting salt, he had

little affection. I see him now, cleaving the Serpentine, with his air

of "the world well lost," striving to reach my stick before it had

touched water. Being only a large spaniel, too small for mere heroism,

he saved no lives in the water but his own--and that, on one occasion,

before our very eyes, from a dark trout stream, which was trying to wash

him down into a black hole among the boulders.

The call of the wild-Spring running--whatever it is--that besets men and

dogs, seldom attained full mastery over him; but one could often see it

struggling against his devotion to the scent of us, and, watching that

dumb contest, I have time and again wondered how far this civilisation of

ours was justifiably imposed on him; how far the love for us that we had

so carefully implanted could ever replace in him the satisfaction of his

primitive wild yearnings: He was like a man, naturally polygamous,

married to one loved woman.

It was surely not for nothing that Rover is dog's most common name, and

would be ours, but for our too tenacious fear of losing something, to

admit, even to ourselves, that we are hankering. There was a man who

said: Strange that two such queerly opposite qualities as courage and

hypocrisy are the leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon! But is not

hypocrisy just a product of tenacity, which is again the lower part of

courage? Is not hypocrisy but an active sense of property in one's good

name, the clutching close of respectability at any price, the feeling

that one must not part, even at the cost of truth, with what he has

sweated so to gain? And so we Anglo-Saxons will not answer to the name

of Rover, and treat our dogs so that they, too, hardly know their

natures.

The history of his one wandering, for which no respectable reason can be

assigned, will never, of course, be known. It was in London, of an

October evening, when we were told he had slipped out and was not

anywhere. Then began those four distressful hours of searching for that

black needle n that blacker bundle of hay. Hours of real dismay and

suffering for it is suffering, indeed, to feel a loved thing swallowed up

in that hopeless haze of London streets. Stolen or run over? Which was

worst? The neighbouring police stations visited, the Dog's Home

notified, an order of five hundred "Lost Dog" bills placed in the

printer's hands, the streets patrolled! And then, in a lull snatched for

food, and still endeavouring to preserve some aspect of assurance, we

heard the bark which meant: "Here is a door I cannot open!" We hurried

forth, and there he was on the top doorstep--busy, unashamed, giving no

explanations, asking for his supper; and very shortly after him came his

five hundred "Lost Dog" bills. Long I sat looking at him that night

after my companion had gone up, thinking of the evening, some years

before, when there followed as that shadow of a spaniel who had been lost

for eleven days. And my heart turned over within me. But he! He was

asleep, for he knew not remorse.

Ah! and there was that other time, when it was reported to me, returning

home at night, that he had gone out to find me; and I went forth again,

disturbed, and whistling his special call to the empty fields. Suddenly

out of the darkness I heard a rushing, and he came furiously dashing

against my heels from he alone knew where he had been lurking and saying

to himself: I will not go in till he comes! I could not scold, there was

something too lyrical in the return of that live, lonely, rushing piece

of blackness through the blacker night. After all, the vagary was but a

variation in his practice when one was away at bed-time, of passionately

scratching up his bed in protest, till it resembled nothing; for, in

spite of his long and solemn face and the silkiness of his ears, there

was much in him yet of the cave bear--he dug graves on the smallest

provocations, in which he never buried anything. He was not a "clever"

dog; and guiltless of all tricks. Nor was he ever "shown." We did not

even dream of subjecting him to this indignity. Was our dog a clown, a

hobby, a fad, a fashion, a feather in our caps that we should subject him

to periodic pennings in stuffy halls, that we should harry his faithful

soul with such tomfoolery? He never even heard us talk about his

lineage, deplore the length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking."

We should have been ashamed to let him smell about us the tar-brush of a

sense of property, to let him think we looked on him as an asset to earn

us pelf or glory. We wished that there should be between us the spirit

that was between the sheep dog and that farmer, who, when asked his dog's

age, touched the old creature's head, and answered thus: "Teresa" (his

daughter) "was born in November, and this one in August." That sheep dog

had seen eighteen years when the great white day came for him, and his

spirit passed away up, to cling with the wood-smoke round the dark

rafters of the kitchen where he had lain so vast a time beside his

master's boots. No, no! If a man does not soon pass beyond the thought

"By what shall this dog profit me?" into the large state of simple

gladness to be with dog, he shall never know the very essence of that

companion ship which depends not on the points of dog, but on some

strange and subtle mingling of mute spirits. For it is by muteness that

a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace,

where words play no torturing tricks. When he just sits, loving, and

knows that he is being loved, those are the moments that I think are

precious to a dog; when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes,

he feels that you are really thinking of him. But he is touchingly

tolerant of one's other occupations. The subject of these memories

always knew when one was too absorbed in work to be so close to him as he

thought proper; yet he never tried to hinder or distract, or asked for

attention. It dinged his mood, of course, so that the red under his eyes

and the folds of his crumply cheeks--which seemed to speak of a touch of

bloodhound introduced a long way back into his breeding--drew deeper and

more manifest. If he could have spoken at such times, he would have

said: "I have been a long time alone, and I cannot always be asleep; but

you know best, and I must not criticise."

He did not at all mind one's being absorbed in other humans; he seemed to

enjoy the sounds of conversation lifting round him, and to know when they

were sensible. He could not, for instance, stand actors or actresses

giving readings of their parts, perceiving at once that the same had no

connection with the minds and real feelings of the speakers; and, having

wandered a little to show his disapproval, he would go to the door and

stare at it till it opened and let him out. Once or twice, it is true,

when an actor of large voice was declaiming an emotional passage, he so

far relented as to go up to him and pant in his face. Music, too, made

him restless, inclined to sigh, and to ask questions. Sometimes, at its

first sound, he would cross to the window and remain there looking for

Her. At others, he would simply go and lie on the loud pedal, and we

never could tell whether it was from sentiment, or because he thought

that in this way he heard less. At one special Nocturne of Chopin's he

always whimpered. He was, indeed, of rather Polish temperament--very gay

when he was gay, dark and brooding when he was not.

On the whole, perhaps his life was uneventful for so far-travelling a

dog, though it held its moments of eccentricity, as when he leaped

through the window of a four-wheeler into Kensington, or sat on a

Dartmoor adder. But that was fortunately of a Sunday afternoon--when

adder and all were torpid, so nothing happened, till a friend, who was

following, lifted him off the creature with his large boot.

If only one could have known more of his private life--more of his

relations with his own kind! I fancy he was always rather a dark dog to

them, having so many thoughts about us that he could not share with any

one, and being naturally fastidious, except with ladies, for whom he had

a chivalrous and catholic taste, so that they often turned and snapped at

him. He had, however, but one lasting love affair, for a liver-coloured

lass of our village, not quite of his own caste, but a wholesome if

somewhat elderly girl, with loving and sphinx-like eyes. Their children,

alas, were not for this world, and soon departed.

Nor was he a fighting dog; but once attacked, he lacked a sense of

values, being unable to distinguish between dogs that he could beat and

dogs with whom he had "no earthly." It was, in fact, as well to

interfere at once, especially in the matter of retrievers, for he never

forgot having in his youth been attacked by a retriever from behind. No,

he never forgot, and never forgave, an enemy. Only a month before that

day of which I cannot speak, being very old and ill, he engaged an Irish

terrier on whose impudence he had long had his eye, and routed him. And

how a battle cheered his spirit! He was certainly no Christian; but,

allowing for essential dog, he was very much a gentleman. And I do think

that most of us who live on this earth these days would rather leave it

with that label on us than the other. For to be a Christian, as Tolstoy

understood the word--and no one else in our time has had logic and love

of truth enough to give it coherent meaning--is (to be quite sincere) not

suited to men of Western blood. Whereas--to be a gentleman! It is a far

cry, but perhaps it can be done. In him, at all events, there was no

pettiness, no meanness, and no cruelty, and though he fell below his

ideal at times, this never altered the true look of his eyes, nor the

simple loyalty in his soul.

But what a crowd of memories come back, bringing with them the perfume of

fallen days! What delights and glamour, what long hours of effort,

discouragements, and secret fears did he not watch over--our black

familiar; and with the sight and scent and touch of him, deepen or

assuage! How many thousand walks did we not go together, so that we

still turn to see if he is following at his padding gait, attentive to

the invisible trails. Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from

us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years

of our own lives. Yet, if they find warmth therein, who would grudge

them those years that they have so guarded? Nothing else of us can they

take to lie upon with outstretched paws and chin pressed to the ground;

and, whatever they take, be sure they have deserved.

Do they know, as we do, that their time must come? Yes, they know, at

rare moments. No other way can I interpret those pauses of his latter

life, when, propped on his forefeet, he would sit for long minutes quite

motionless--his head drooped, utterly withdrawn; then turn those eyes of

his and look at me. That look said more plainly than all words could:

"Yes, I know that I must go!" If we have spirits that persist--they

have. If we know after our departure, who we were they do. No one, I

think, who really longs for truth, can ever glibly say which it will be

for dog and man persistence or extinction of our consciousness. There is

but one thing certain--the childishness of fretting over that eternal

question. Whichever it be, it must be right, the only possible thing.

He felt that too, I know; but then, like his master, he was what is

called a pessimist.

My companion tells me that, since he left us, he has once come back. It

was Old Year's Night, and she was sad, when he came to her in visible

shape of his black body, passing round the dining-table from the

window-end, to his proper place beneath the table, at her feet. She saw

him quite clearly; she heard the padding tap-tap of his paws and very

toe-nails; she felt his warmth brushing hard against the front of her

skirt. She thought then that he would settle down upon her feet, but

something disturbed him, and he stood pausing, pressed against her, then

moved out toward where I generally sit, but was not sitting that night.

She saw him stand there, as if considering; then at some sound or laugh,

she became self-conscious, and slowly, very slowly, he was no longer

there. Had he some message, some counsel to give, something he would

say, that last night of the last year of all those he had watched over

us? Will he come back again?

No stone stands over where he lies. It is on our hearts that his life is

engraved.

1912.

FELICITY

When God is so good to the fields, of what use are words--those poor

husks of sentiment! There is no painting Felicity on the wing! No way

of bringing on to the canvas the flying glory of things! A single

buttercup of the twenty million in one field is worth all these dry

symbols--that can never body forth the very spirit of that froth of May

breaking over the hedges, the choir of birds and bees, the

lost-travelling down of the wind flowers, the white-throated swallows in

their Odysseys. Just here there are no skylarks, but what joy of song

and leaf; of lanes lighted with bright trees, the few oaks still golden

brown, and the ashes still spiritual! Only the blackbirds and thrushes

can sing-up this day, and cuckoos over the hill. The year has flown so

fast that the apple-trees have dropped nearly all their bloom, and in

"long meadow" the "daggers" are out early, beside the narrow bright

streams. Orpheus sits there on a stone, when nobody is by, and pipes to

the ponies; and Pan can often be seen dancing with his nymphs in the

raised beech-grove where it is always twilight, if you lie still enough

against the far bank.

Who can believe in growing old, so long as we are wrapped in this cloak

of colour and wings and song; so long as this unimaginable vision is here

for us to gaze at--the soft-faced sheep about us, and the wool-bags

drying out along the fence, and great numbers of tiny ducks, so trustful

that the crows have taken several.

Blue is the colour of youth, and all the blue flowers have a "fey" look.

Everything seems young too young to work. There is but one thing busy, a

starling, fetching grubs for its little family, above my head--it must

take that flight at least two hundred times a day. The children should be

very fat.

When the sky is so happy, and the flowers so luminous, it does not seem

possible that the bright angels of this day shall pass into dark night,

that slowly these wings shall close, and the cuckoo praise himself to

sleep, mad midges dance-in the evening; the grass shiver with dew, wind

die, and no bird sing . . . .

Yet so it is. Day has gone--the song and glamour and swoop of wings.

Slowly, has passed the daily miracle. It is night. But Felicity has not

withdrawn; she has but changed her robe for silence, velvet, and the

pearl fan of the moon. Everything is sleeping, save only a single star,

and the pansies. Why they should be more wakeful than the other flowers,

I do not know. The expressions of their faces, if one bends down into

the dusk, are sweeter and more cunning than ever. They have some compact,

no doubt, in hand.

What a number of voices have given up the ghost to this night of but one

voice--the murmur of the stream out there in darkness!

With what religion all has been done! Not one buttercup open; the

yew-trees already with shadows flung down! No moths are abroad yet; it

is too early in the year for nightjars; and the owls are quiet. But who

shall say that in this silence, in this hovering wan light, in this air

bereft of wings, and of all scent save freshness, there is less of the

ineffable, less of that before which words are dumb?

It is strange how this tranquillity of night, that seems so final, is

inhabited, if one keeps still enough. A lamb is bleating out there on

the dim moor; a bird somewhere, a little one, about three fields away,

makes the sweetest kind of chirruping; some cows are still cropping.

There is a scent, too, underneath the freshness-sweet-brier, I think, and

our Dutch honeysuckle; nothing else could so delicately twine itself with

air. And even in this darkness the roses have colour, more beautiful

perhaps than ever. If colour be, as they say, but the effect of light on

various fibre, one may think of it as a tune, the song of thanksgiving

that each form puts forth, to sun and moon and stars and fire. These

moon-coloured roses are singing a most quiet song. I see all of a sudden

that there are many more stars beside that one so red and watchful. The

flown kite is there with its seven pale worlds; it has adventured very

high and far to-night-with a company of others remoter still. . . .

This serenity of night! What could seem less likely ever more to move,

and change again to day? Surely now the world has found its long sleep;

and the pearly glimmer from the moon will last, and the precious silence

never again yield to clamour; the grape-bloom of this mystery never more

pale out into gold . . . .

And yet it is not so. The nightly miracle has passed. It is dawn. Faint

light has come. I am waiting for the first sound. The sky as yet is

like nothing but grey paper, with the shadows of wild geese passing. The

trees are phantoms. And then it comes--that first call of a bird,

startled at discovering day! Just one call--and now, here, there, on all

the trees, the sudden answers swelling, of that most sweet and careless

choir. Was irresponsibility ever so divine as this, of birds waking?

Then--saffron into the sky, and once more silence! What is it birds do

after the first Chorale? Think of their sins and business? Or just

sleep again? The trees are fast dropping unreality, and the cuckoos

begin calling. Colour is burning up in the flowers already; the dew

smells of them.

The miracle is ended, for the starling has begun its job; and the sun is

fretting those dark, busy wings with gold. Full day has come again. But

the face of it is a little strange, it is not like yesterday. Queer-to

think, no day is like to a day that's past and no night like a night

that's coming! Why, then, fear death, which is but night? Why care, if

next day have different face and spirit? The sun has lighted

buttercup-field now, the wind touches the lime-tree. Something passes

over me away up there.

It is Felicity on her wings!

1912.

STUDIES AND ESSAYS

By John Galsworthy

"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."

--ANATOLE FRANCE

CONCERNING LETTERS

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

MEDITATION ON FINALITY

WANTED--SCHOOLING

ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE

THE WINDLESTRAW

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

Once upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had occasion to set forth on a

journey. It was a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a moon no

larger than the paring of a finger-nail. And as he rode through the

purlieus of his city, the white mane of his amber-coloured steed was all

that he could clearly see in the dusk of the high streets. His way led

through a quarter but little known to him, and he was surprised to find

that his horse, instead of ambling forward with his customary gentle

vigour, stepped carefully from side to side, stopping now and then to

curve his neck and prick his ears--as though at some thing of fear

unseen in the darkness; while on either hand creatures could be heard

rustling and scuttling, and little cold draughts as of wings fanned the

rider's cheeks.

The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so great was the darkness

that he could not even see his escort.

"What is the name of this street?" he said.

"Sire, it is called the Vita Publica."

"It is very dark." Even as he spoke his horse staggered, but, recovering

its foothold with an effort, stood trembling violently. Nor could all the

incitements of its master induce the beast again to move forward.

"Is there no one with a lanthorn in this street?" asked the Prince.

His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly for any one who had a

lanthorn. Now, it chanced that an old man sleeping in a hovel on a

pallet of straw was, awakened by these cries. When he heard that it was

the Prince of Felicitas himself, he came hastily, carrying his lanthorn,

and stood trembling beside the Prince's horse. It was so dark that the

Prince could not see him.

"Light your lanthorn, old man," he said.

The old man laboriously lit his lanthorn. Its pale rays fled out on

either hand; beautiful but grim was the vision they disclosed. Tall

houses, fair court-yards, and a palm grown garden; in front of the

Prince's horse a deep cesspool, on whose jagged edges the good beast's

hoofs were planted; and, as far as the glimmer of the lanthorn stretched,

both ways down the rutted street, paving stones displaced, and smooth

tesselated marble; pools of mud, the hanging fruit of an orange tree, and

dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous rats bolting across from house to

house. The old man held the lanthorn higher; and instantly bats flying

against it would have beaten out the light but for the thin protection of

its horn sides.

The Prince sat still upon his horse, looking first at the rutted space

that he had traversed and then at the rutted space before him.

"Without a light," he said, "this thoroughfare is dangerous. What is

your name, old man?"

"My name is Cethru," replied the aged churl.

"Cethru!" said the Prince. "Let it be your duty henceforth to walk with

your lanthorn up and down this street all night and every night,"--and he

looked at Cethru: "Do you understand, old man, what it is you have to

do?"

The old man answered in a voice that trembled like a rusty flute:

"Aye, aye!--to walk up and down and hold my lanthorn so that folk can see

where they be going."

The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old man, lurching forward,

touched his stirrup.

"How long be I to go on wi' thiccy job?"

"Until you die!"

Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin face, like

a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin grey hairs

flutter in the draught of the bats' wings circling round the light.

"'Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an' my lanthorn's nowt but a poor

thing."

With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the old man's

forehead.

"Until you die, old man," he repeated; and bidding his followers to light

torches from Cethru's lanthorn, he rode on down the twisting street. The

clatter of the horses' hoofs died out in the night, and the scuttling and

the rustling of the rats and the whispers of the bats' wings were heard

again.

Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, sighed heavily; then,

spitting on his hands, he tightened the old girdle round his loins, and

slinging the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level of his waist,

and began to make his way along the street. His progress was but slow,

for he had many times to stop and rekindle the flame within his lanthorn,

which the bats' wings, his own stumbles, and the jostlings of footpads or

of revellers returning home, were for ever extinguishing. In traversing

that long street he spent half the night, and half the night in

traversing it back again. The saffron swan of dawn, slow swimming up the

sky-river between the high roof-banks, bent her neck down through the

dark air-water to look at him staggering below her, with his still

smoking wick. No sooner did Cethru see that sunlit bird, than with a

great sigh of joy he sat him down, and at once fell asleep.

Now when the dwellers in the houses of the Vita Publica first gained

knowledge that this old man passed every night with his lanthorn up and

down their street, and when they marked those pallid gleams gliding over

the motley prospect of cesspools and garden gates, over the sightless

hovels and the rich-carved frontages of their palaces; or saw them stay

their journey and remain suspended like a handful of daffodils held up

against the black stuffs of secrecy--they said:

"It is good that the old man should pass like this--we shall see better

where we're going; and if the Watch have any job on hand, or want to put

the pavements in order, his lanthorn will serve their purpose well

enough." And they would call out of their doors and windows to him

passing:

"Hola! old man Cethru! All's well with our house, and with the street

before it?"

But, for answer, the old man only held his lanthorn up, so that in the

ring of its pale light they saw some sight or other in the street. And

his silence troubled them, one by one, for each had expected that he

would reply:

"Aye, aye! All's well with your house, Sirs, and with the street before

it!"

Thus they grew irritated with this old man who did not seem able to do

anything but just hold his lanthorn up. And gradually they began to

dislike his passing by their doors with his pale light, by which they

could not fail to see, not only the rich-carved frontages and scrolled

gates of courtyards and fair gardens, but things that were not pleasing

to the eye. And they murmured amongst themselves: "What is the good of

this old man and his silly lanthorn? We can see all we want to see

without him; in fact, we got on very well before he came."

So, as he passed, rich folk who were supping would pelt him with

orange-peel and empty the dregs of their wine over his head; and poor

folk, sleeping in their hutches, turned over, as the rays of the lanthorn

fell on them, and cursed him for that disturbance. Nor did revellers or

footpads treat the old man, civilly, but tied him to the wall, where he

was constrained to stay till a kind passerby released him. And ever the

bats darkened his lanthorn with their wings and tried to beat the flame

out. And the old man thought: "This be a terrible hard job; I don't seem

to please nobody." But because the Prince of Felicitas had so commanded

him, he continued nightly to pass with his lanthorn up and down the

street; and every morning as the saffron swan came swimming overhead, to

fall asleep. But his sleep did not last long, for he was compelled to

pass many hours each day in gathering rushes and melting down tallow for

his lanthorn; so that his lean face grew more than ever like a sandwich

of dried leather.

Now it came to pass that the Town Watch having had certain complaints

made to them that persons had been bitten in the Vita Publica by rats,

doubted of their duty to destroy these ferocious creatures; and they held

investigation, summoning the persons bitten and inquiring of them how it

was that in so dark a street they could tell that the animals which had

bitten them were indeed rats. Howbeit for some time no one could be

found who could say more than what he had been told, and since this was

not evidence, the Town Watch had good hopes that they would not after all

be forced to undertake this tedious enterprise. But presently there came

before them one who said that he had himself seen the rat which had

bitten him, by the light of an old man's lanthorn. When the Town Watch

heard this they were vexed, for they knew that if this were true they

would now be forced to prosecute the arduous undertaking, and they said:

"Bring in this old man!"

Cethru was brought before them trembling.

"What is this we hear, old man, about your lanthorn and the rat? And in

the first place, what were you doing in the Vita Publica at that time of

night?"

Cethru answered: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn!"

"Tell us--did you see the rat?"

Cethru shook his head: "My lanthorn seed the rat, maybe!" he muttered.

"Old owl!" said the Captain of the Watch: "Be careful what you say! If

you saw the rat, why did you then not aid this unhappy citizen who was

bitten by it--first, to avoid that rodent, and subsequently to slay it,

thereby relieving the public of a pestilential danger?"

Cethru looked at him, and for some seconds did not reply; then he said

slowly: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn."

"That you have already told us," said the Captain of the Watch; "it is no

answer."

Cethru's leathern cheeks became wine-coloured, so desirous was he to

speak, and so unable. And the Watch sneered and laughed, saying:

"This is a fine witness."

But of a sudden Cethru spoke:

"What would I be duin'--killin' rats; tidden my business to kill rats."

The Captain of the Watch caressed his beard, and looking at the old man

with contempt, said:

"It seems to me, brothers, that this is an idle old vagabond, who does no

good to any one. We should be well advised, I think, to prosecute him

for vagrancy. But that is not at this moment the matter in hand. Owing

to the accident--scarcely fortunate--of this old man's passing with his

lanthorn, it would certainly appear that citizens have been bitten by

rodents. It is then, I fear, our duty to institute proceedings against

those poisonous and violent animals."

And amidst the sighing of the Watch, it was so resolved.

Cethru was glad to shuffle away, unnoticed, from the Court, and sitting

down under a camel-date tree outside the City Wall, he thus reflected:

"They were rough with me! I done nothin', so far's I can see!"

And a long time he sat there with the bunches of the camel-dates above

him, golden as the sunlight. Then, as the scent of the lyric-flowers,

released by evening, warned him of the night dropping like a flight of

dark birds on the plain, he rose stiffly, and made his way as usual

toward the Vita Publica.

He had traversed but little of that black thoroughfare, holding his

lanthorn at the level of his breast, when the sound of a splash and cries

for help smote his long, thin ears. Remembering how the Captain of the

Watch had admonished him, he stopped and peered about, but owing to his

proximity to the light of his own lanthorn he saw nothing. Presently he

heard another splash and the sound of blowings and of puffings, but still

unable to see clearly whence they came, he was forced in bewilderment to

resume his march. But he had no sooner entered the next bend of that

obscure and winding avenue than the most lamentable, lusty cries assailed

him. Again he stood still, blinded by his own light. Somewhere at hand

a citizen was being beaten, for vague, quick-moving forms emerged into

the radiance of his lanthorn out of the deep violet of the night air.

The cries swelled, and died away, and swelled; and the mazed Cethru moved

forward on his way. But very near the end of his first traversage, the

sound of a long, deep sighing, as of a fat man in spiritual pain, once

more arrested him.

"Drat me!" he thought, "this time I will see what 'tis," and he spun

round and round, holding his lanthorn now high, now low, and to both

sides. "The devil an' all's in it to-night," he murmured to himself;

"there's some'at here fetchin' of its breath awful loud." But for his

life he could see nothing, only that the higher he held his lanthorn the

more painful grew the sound of the fat but spiritual sighing. And

desperately, he at last resumed his progress.

On the morrow, while he still slept stretched on his straw pallet, there

came to him a member of the Watch.

"Old man, you are wanted at the Court House; rouse up, and bring your

lanthorn."

Stiffly Cethru rose.

"What be they wantin' me fur now, mester?"

"Ah!" replied the Watchman, "they are about to see if they can't put an

end to your goings-on."

Cethru shivered, and was silent.

Now when they reached the Court House it was patent that a great affair

was forward; for the Judges were in their robes, and a crowd of

advocates, burgesses, and common folk thronged the careen, lofty hall of

justice.

When Cethru saw that all eyes were turned on him, he shivered still more

violently, fixing his fascinated gaze on the three Judges in their

emerald robes.

"This then is the prisoner," said the oldest of the Judges; "proceed with

the indictment!"

A little advocate in snuff-coloured clothes rose on little legs, and

commenced to read:

"Forasmuch as on the seventeenth night of August fifteen hundred years

since the Messiah's death, one Celestine, a maiden of this city, fell

into a cesspool in the Vita Publica, and while being quietly drowned, was

espied of the burgess Pardonix by the light of a lanthorn held by the old

man Cethru; and, forasmuch as, plunging in, the said Pardonix rescued

her, not without grave risk of life and the ruin, of his clothes, and

to-day lies ill of fever; and forasmuch as the old man Cethru was the

cause of these misfortunes to the burgess Pardonix, by reason of his

wandering lanthorn's showing the drowning maiden, the Watch do hereby

indict, accuse, and otherwise place charge upon this Cethru of

'Vagabondage without serious occupation.'

"And, forasmuch as on this same night the Watchman Filepo, made aware, by

the light of this said Cethru's lanthorn, of three sturdy footpads, went

to arrest them, and was set on by the rogues and well-nigh slain, the

Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and otherwise charge upon Cethru

complicity in this assault, by reasons, namely, first, that he discovered

the footpads to the Watchman and the Watchman to the footpads by the

light of his lanthorn; and, second, that, having thus discovered them, he

stood idly by and gave no assistance to the law.

"And, forasmuch as on this same night the wealthy burgess Pranzo, who,

having prepared a banquet, was standing in his doorway awaiting the

arrival of his guests, did see, by the light of the said Cethru's

lanthorn, a beggar woman and her children grovelling in the gutter for

garbage, whereby his appetite was lost completely; and, forasmuch as he,

Pranzo, has lodged a complaint against the Constitution for permitting

women and children to go starved, the Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and

otherwise make charge on Cethru of rebellion and of anarchy, in that

wilfully he doth disturb good citizens by showing to them without

provocation disagreeable sights, and doth moreover endanger the laws by

causing persons to desire to change them.

"These be the charges, reverend Judges, so please you!"

And having thus spoken, the little advocate resumed his seat.

Then said the oldest of the Judges:

"Cethru, you have heard; what answer do you make?"

But no word, only the chattering of teeth, came from Cethru.

"Have you no defence?" said the Judge: "these are grave accusations!"

Then Cethru spoke:

"So please your Highnesses," he said, "can I help what my lanthorn sees?"

And having spoken these words, to all further questions he remained more

silent than a headless man.

The Judges took counsel of each other, and the oldest of them thus

addressed himself to Cethru:

"If you have no defence, old man, and there is no one will say a word for

you, we can but proceed to judgment."

Then in the main aisle of the Court there rose a youthful advocate.

"Most reverend Judges," he said in a mellifluous voice, clearer than the

fluting of a bell-bird, "it is useless to look for words from this old

man, for it is manifest that he himself is nothing, and that his lanthorn

is alone concerned in this affair. But, reverend Judges, bethink you

well: Would you have a lanthorn ply a trade or be concerned with a

profession, or do aught indeed but pervade the streets at night, shedding

its light, which, if you will, is vagabondage? And, Sirs, upon the

second count of this indictment: Would you have a lanthorn dive into

cesspools to rescue maidens? Would you have a lanthorn to beat footpads?

Or, indeed, to be any sort of partisan either of the Law or of them that

break the Law? Sure, Sirs, I think not. And as to this third charge of

fostering anarchy let me but describe the trick of this lanthorn's flame.

It is distilled, most reverend Judges, of oil and wick, together with

that sweet secret heat of whose birth no words of mine can tell. And

when, Sirs, this pale flame has sprung into the air swaying to every

wind, it brings vision to the human eye. And, if it be charged on this

old man Cethru that he and his lanthorn by reason of their showing not

only the good but the evil bring no pleasure into the world, I ask, Sirs,

what in the world is so dear as this power to see whether it be the

beautiful or the foul that is disclosed? Need I, indeed, tell you of the

way this flame spreads its feelers, and delicately darts and hovers in

the darkness, conjuring things from nothing? This mechanical summoning,

Sirs, of visions out of blackness is benign, by no means of malevolent

intent; no more than if a man, passing two donkeys in the road, one lean

and the other fat, could justly be arraigned for malignancy because they

were not both fat. This, reverend Judges, is the essence of the matter

concerning the rich burgess, Pranzo, who, on account of the sight he saw

by Cethru's lanthorn, has lost the equilibrium of his stomach. For, Sirs,

the lanthorn did but show that which was there, both fair and foul, no

more, no less; and though it is indeed true that Pranzo is upset, it was

not because the lanthorn maliciously produced distorted images, but

merely caused to be seen, in due proportions, things which Pranzo had not

seen before. And surely, reverend Judges, being just men, you would not

have this lanthorn turn its light away from what is ragged and ugly

because there are also fair things on which its light may fall; how,

indeed, being a lanthorn, could it, if it would? And I would have you

note this, Sirs, that by this impartial discovery of the proportions of

one thing to another, this lanthorn must indeed perpetually seem to cloud

and sadden those things which are fair, because of the deep instincts of

harmony and justice planted in the human breast. However unfair and

cruel, then, this lanthorn may seem to those who, deficient in these

instincts, desire all their lives to see naught but what is pleasant,

lest they, like Pranzo, should lose their appetites--it is not consonant

with equity that this lanthorn should, even if it could, be prevented

from thus mechanically buffeting the holiday cheek of life. I would

think, Sirs, that you should rather blame the queazy state of Pranzo's

stomach. The old man has said that he cannot help what his lanthorn

sees. This is a just saying. But if, reverend Judges, you deem this

equipoised, indifferent lanthorn to be indeed blameworthy for having

shown in the same moment, side by side, the skull and the fair face, the

burdock and the tiger-lily, the butterfly and toad, then, most reverend

Judges, punish it, but do not punish this old man, for he himself is but

a flume of smoke, thistle down dispersed--nothing!"

So saying, the young advocate ceased.

Again the three Judges took counsel of each other, and after much talk

had passed between them, the oldest spoke:

"What this young advocate has said seems to us to be the truth. We

cannot punish a lanthorn. Let the old man go!"

And Cethru went out into the sunshine . . . .

Now it came to pass that the Prince of Felicitas, returning from his

journey, rode once more on his amber-coloured steed down the Vita

Publica.

The night was dark as a rook's wing, but far away down the street burned

a little light, like a red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding by

descried it for a lanthorn, with an old man sleeping beside it.

"How is this, Friend?" said the Prince. "You are not walking as I bade

you, carrying your lanthorn."

But Cethru neither moved nor answered:

"Lift him up!" said the Prince.

They lifted up his head and held the lanthorn to his closed eyes. So

lean was that brown face that the beams from the lanthorn would not rest

on it, but slipped past on either side into the night. His eyes did not

open. He was dead.

And the Prince touched him, saying: "Farewell, old man! The lanthorn is

still alight. Go, fetch me another one, and let him carry it!"

1909.

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping

of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the

dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to

the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays like 'Lear',

'Hamlet', and 'Macbeth'. But such is not the moral to be found in the

great bulk of contemporary Drama. The moral of the average play is now,

and probably has always been, the triumph at all costs of a supposed

immediate ethical good over a supposed immediate ethical evil.

The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to its

spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected its

creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a picture

into a caricature. A Drama which lives under the shadow of the distorted

moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine--forgets so completely that

it often prides itself on having forgotten.

Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter of the moral, three

courses open to the serious dramatist. The first is: To definitely set

before the public that which it wishes to have set before it, the views

and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it believes.

This way is the most common, successful, and popular. It makes the

dramatist's position sure, and not too obviously authoritative.

The second course is: To definitely set before the public those views and

codes of life by which the dramatist himself lives, those theories in

which he himself believes, the more effectively if they are the opposite

of what the public wishes to have placed before it, presenting them so

that the audience may swallow them like powder in a spoonful of jam.

There is a third course: To set before the public no cut-and-dried codes,

but the phenomena of life and character, selected and combined, but not

distorted, by the dramatist's outlook, set down without fear, favour, or

prejudice, leaving the public to draw such poor moral as nature may

afford. This third method requires a certain detachment; it requires a

sympathy with, a love of, and a curiosity as to, things for their own

sake; it requires a far view, together with patient industry, for no

immediately practical result.

It was once said of Shakespeare that he had never done any good to any

one, and never would. This, unfortunately, could not, in the sense in

which the word "good" was then meant, be said of most modern dramatists.

In truth, the good that Shakespeare did to humanity was of a remote, and,

shall we say, eternal nature; something of the good that men get from

having the sky and the sea to look at. And this partly because he was,

in his greater plays at all events, free from the habit of drawing a

distorted moral. Now, the playwright who supplies to the public the

facts of life distorted by the moral which it expects, does so that he

may do the public what he considers an immediate good, by fortifying its

prejudices; and the dramatist who supplies to the public facts distorted

by his own advanced morality, does so because he considers that he will

at once benefit the public by substituting for its worn-out ethics, his

own. In both cases the advantage the dramatist hopes to confer on the

public is immediate and practical.

But matters change, and morals change; men remain--and to set men, and

the facts about them, down faithfully, so that they draw for us the moral

of their natural actions, may also possibly be of benefit to the

community. It is, at all events, harder than to set men and facts down,

as they ought, or ought not to be. This, however, is not to say that a

dramatist should, or indeed can, keep himself and his temperamental

philosophy out of his work. As a man lives and thinks, so will he write.

But it is certain, that to the making of good drama, as to the practice

of every other art, there must be brought an almost passionate love of

discipline, a white-heat of self-respect, a desire to make the truest,

fairest, best thing in one's power; and that to these must be added an

eye that does not flinch. Such qualities alone will bring to a drama the

selfless character which soaks it with inevitability.

The word "pessimist" is frequently applied to the few dramatists who have

been content to work in this way. It has been applied, among others, to

Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Ibsen; it will be applied to many in the

future. Nothing, however, is more dubious than the way in which these

two words "pessimist" and "optimist" are used; for the optimist appears

to be he who cannot bear the world as it is, and is forced by his nature

to picture it as it ought to be, and the pessimist one who cannot only

bear the world as it is, but loves it well enough to draw it faithfully.

The true lover of the human race is surely he who can put up with it in

all its forms, in vice as well as in virtue, in defeat no less than in

victory; the true seer he who sees not only joy but sorrow, the true

painter of human life one who blinks nothing. It may be that he is also,

incidentally, its true benefactor.

In the whole range of the social fabric there are only two impartial

persons, the scientist and the artist, and under the latter heading such

dramatists as desire to write not only for to-day, but for to-morrow,

must strive to come.

But dramatists being as they are made--past remedy it is perhaps more

profitable to examine the various points at which their qualities and

defects are shown.

The plot! A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of the

interplay of circumstance on temperament, and temperament on

circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea. A human being

is the best plot there is; it may be impossible to see why he is a good

plot, because the idea within which he was brought forth cannot be fully

grasped; but it is plain that he is a good plot. He is organic. And so

it must be with a good play. Reason alone produces no good plots; they

come by original sin, sure conception, and instinctive after-power of

selecting what benefits the germ. A bad plot, on the other hand, is

simply a row of stakes, with a character impaled on each--characters who

would have liked to live, but came to untimely grief; who started

bravely, but fell on these stakes, placed beforehand in a row, and were

transfixed one by one, while their ghosts stride on, squeaking and

gibbering, through the play. Whether these stakes are made of facts or

of ideas, according to the nature of the dramatist who planted them,

their effect on the unfortunate characters is the same; the creatures

were begotten to be staked, and staked they are! The demand for a good

plot, not unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: "Tickle my sensations

by stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be

troubled to take the characters seriously. Set the persons of the play

to action, regardless of time, sequence, atmosphere, and probability!"

Now, true dramatic action is what characters do, at once contrary, as it

were, to expectation, and yet because they have already done other

things. No dramatist should let his audience know what is coming; but

neither should he suffer his characters to, act without making his

audience feel that those actions are in harmony with temperament, and

arise from previous known actions, together with the temperaments and

previous known actions of the other characters in the play. The

dramatist who hangs his characters to his plot, instead of hanging his

plot to his characters, is guilty of cardinal sin.

The dialogue! Good dialogue again is character, marshalled so as

continually to stimulate interest or excitement. The reason good

dialogue is seldom found in plays is merely that it is hard to write, for

it requires not only a knowledge of what interests or excites, but such a

feeling for character as brings misery to the dramatist's heart when his

creations speak as they should not speak--ashes to his mouth when they

say things for the sake of saying them--disgust when they are "smart."

The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere art, denying

itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to the mere machinery

of the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams severed from character,

relying for fun and pathos on the fun and tears of life. From start to

finish good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace; clear, of fine

texture, furthering with each thread the harmony and strength of a design

to which all must be subordinated.

But good dialogue is also spiritual action. In so far as the dramatist

divorces his dialogue from spiritual action--that is to say, from

progress of events, or toward events which are significant of

character--he is stultifying the thing done; he may make pleasing

disquisitions, he is not making drama. And in so far as he twists

character to suit his moral or his plot, he is neglecting a first

principle, that truth to Nature which alone invests art with handmade

quality.

The dramatist's license, in fact, ends with his design. In conception

alone he is free. He may take what character or group of characters he

chooses, see them with what eyes, knit them with what idea, within the

limits of his temperament; but once taken, seen, and knitted, he is bound

to treat them like a gentleman, with the tenderest consideration of their

mainsprings. Take care of character; action and dialogue will take care

of themselves! The true dramatist gives full rein to his temperament in

the scope and nature of his subject; having once selected subject and

characters, he is just, gentle, restrained, neither gratifying his lust

for praise at the expense of his offspring, nor using them as puppets to

flout his audience. Being himself the nature that brought them forth, he

guides them in the course predestined at their conception. So only have

they a chance of defying Time, which is always lying in wait to destroy

the false, topical, or fashionable, all--in a word--that is not based on

the permanent elements of human nature. The perfect dramatist rounds up

his characters and facts within the ring-fence of a dominant idea which

fulfils the craving of his spirit; having got them there, he suffers them

to live their own lives.