WHEN he walked down the streets with his head drooping towards the
pavement and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat the
grown-ups would say, “There goes poor Mr. X. wool-gathering as usual”;
and we children used to wonder what he did with all the wool and where he
found it to gather. Perhaps he collected it from the thorn-bushes
whereon the sheep had scratched themselves, or perhaps, being a magician,
he had found a way to shear the flocks that we often saw in the sky on
fine and windy days. At all events, for a while his strange calling made
us regard him with interest as a man capable of doing dark and mysterious
things. Then the grown-ups tried to dispel our illusions by explaining
that they only meant that he was absent-minded, a dreamer, an awful
warning to young folk who had their way to make in the world. This
admirable moral lesson, like most of their moral lessons, failed because
they did not appreciate the subtlety of our minds. We saw that the
wool-gatherer did no recognisable work, wore comfortably untidy clothes,
walked in the mud as much as he wanted to, and, in fine, lived a life of
enviable freedom; and we thought that on the whole when we grew up we
should like to be wool-gatherers too. Even the phrase “absent-minded”
excited our admiration; for we knew that it would be a fine thing if our
thoughts could travel in foreign countries, where there are parrots and
monkeys loose in the woods, while our bodies were imprisoned in the
schoolroom under the unsympathetic supervision of the governess of the
moment. Although we no longer credited him with being a magician, the
tardy explanations of the grown-ups had, if anything, increased his
glamour. It seemed to us that he must be very wise.
He lived in an old house a little way out of the town, and the house
stood in a garden after our own heart. We knew by the shocked comments
of our elders that it had formerly been cut and trimmed like all the
other gardens with which we were acquainted, but it was now a perfect
wilderness, a delightful place. My brother and I got up early one
morning when the dew was on the world and explored it thoroughly. `We
found a goat in an outhouse and could see the marks in the meadow that
had once been a lawn, where he was tethered during the day. The
wool-gatherer was evidently in the habit of sitting under a tree that
stood at one corner, for the earth was pitted with the holes that had
been made by the legs of his chair. Being a wise man, we thought it
probable that he conversed with his goat and could understand the answers
of that pensive animal, who wagged his beard at us when we peeped shyly
into his den. In the long grass by the tree we found a book bound like a
school prize lying quite wet with the dew. It was full of cabalistic
signs, and we took care to leave it where we found it lest it should be
black magic, though now I would support the theory that Mr. X. read his
Homer in the original. Taking it altogether, it was the most sensible
garden we had ever seen, with plenty of old fruit-trees, but with none of
those silly flower-beds that incommode the careless feet of youth. Our
expedition enhanced our opinion of the wool-gatherer’s wisdom.
Here at least was a grown-up person who knew how to live in a decent
fashion, and when he ambled by us in the market-place, his muddy boots
tripping on the cobbles, and the pockets of his green-grey overcoat
pulled down by the weight of his hands, our eyes paid him respectful
tribute. He really served a useful purpose in our universe, for he
showed us that it was possible to grow old without going hopelessly to
the bad. Sometimes, considering the sad lives of our elders who did of
their own free will all the disagreeable things that we were made to do
by force, we had been smitten with the fear that in the course of years
we, too, would be afflicted with this melancholy disease. The
wool-gatherer restored our confidence in ourselves. If he could be
grown-up without troubling to be tidy or energetic, why, then, so could
we! It amused us to feel that our affronted rulers were itching to give
him a good talking to and to send him off to brush his clothes and his
boots; but he was beyond the reach of authority, this splendid man. And
one of these days we thought that we, too, would enjoy this delightful
condition of freedom, for, like many grown men and women, we did not
realise that liberty is a state of mind and not an environment.
We had never seen the inside of his house, but we could imagine what it
was like. No doubt he kept his servants in proper order and did not
allow them to tidy up, so that his things lay all over the room where he
could find them when he wanted them. He had a friendly cat, with whom we
were acquainted, so that he would not lack company, and probably on wet
days when he could not go out into the garden he had the goat in to play
with him. He went to bed when he liked and got up when he liked, and had
cake for every meal instead of common bread. A man like that would be
quite capable of having a sweetshop in one of the rooms, with a real pair
of scales, so that he could help himself whenever he wanted to. Whenever
our own lives grew a little dull we played at being the wool-gatherer,
but although he occupied such a large part of our thoughts we never dared
to speak to him, because we were afraid of his extraordinary wisdom.
This was not our normal reason for avoiding the society of grown-up
people.
When one day a funeral passed us in the street, and we were told that it
was the wool-gatherer’s, we shook our heads sceptically. The coffin was
quite new and shiny, and all the horses had their hoofs neatly blacked,
and we thought we knew our man better than that. But as day followed day
and we met him no more our doubts were overcome, and we knew that he was
dead. After a while his will was published in the local newspaper, and
the grown-ups were greatly impressed, because it seemed that he had been
very rich and had left all his money to hospitals. Secretly we
patronised them for their tardy discovery of our man’s worth; it had not
needed any newspaper to tell us that he was remarkable. But when some
new people took his house and cut down all the bushes and tidied up the
garden we were really hurt, and began to realise what we had lost. Where
should we play now these hot nights of summer when the hours passed so
slowly and we could not sleep? They had made his beautiful wilderness as
dull as our own, and our dreams must find a new playground. We never
heard what happened to the goat.
Now that I am myself grown-up, though children occasionally flatter me by
treating me as an equal, I revert sometimes to our earliest thoughts and
wonder what the wool-gatherer did with all his wool. Perhaps he wove it
into blankets for the poor dreamless ones of the world. They are many,
for it is not so easy to be absent-minded as people think; in the first
place, it is necessary to have a mind. It is wrong also to believe that
wool-gatherers fill no useful place in life. I have shown how Mr. X.,
lost in his world of dreams, was yet of real service to us as children,
and in the same way I think that we who live the hurried life derive
genuine satisfaction from the spectacle of the dreamers sauntering by.
If they serve no other purpose, they are at least milestones by aid of
which we can estimate our own speed, and if no one were idle we would win
no credit from our marvellous energy. Also they are happy, and the
philosopher will always hesitate to condemn the way of life of a man who
succeeds in that task. Perhaps we should all be better off gathering
wool!