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diff --git a/25523.txt b/25523.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..21c5177 --- /dev/null +++ b/25523.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4338 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Junk, by H. M. Tomlinson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Old Junk + +Author: H. M. Tomlinson + +Commentator: S. K. Ratcliffe + +Release Date: May 19, 2008 [EBook #25523] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD JUNK *** + + + + +Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +OLD JUNK + + + +BY + +H. M. TOMLINSON + + + +FOREWORD BY S. K. RATCLIFFE + + + +NEW YORK ALFRED . A . KNOPF 1920 + +COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY +ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. +_Second Printing August, 1920_ + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +_To + +C. H. G. H. + +Who saw with me so much of what is in this book_ + +(_Killed in action in Artois, August 27th, 1918_) + + + + +These stories of travel and chance have been selected from writings +published in various periodicals between January 1907 and April 1918, +and are arranged in order of time. + + + + +Foreword + + +_The author of_ OLD JUNK _has been called a legend. A colleague who +during the later stages of the war visited the western front assured me +that this was the right word by which to describe the memory left among +officers and men, not so much by his work as a war correspondent, as by +his original and fascinating character. A legend, too, he appears to be +in the newspaper world of London: but there in a different sense, by +reason of the singular contradiction between the human creature beloved +of all his fellows and the remarkable productions of his pen._ + +_The first thing to say about H. M. Tomlinson, the thing of which you +become acutely aware on making his acquaintance, is that he is a +Londoner. "Nearly a pure-blooded London Saxon" is his characterization +of himself. And so it is. He could have sprung from no other stock. In +person and speech, in the indefinable quality of the man, in the humour +which continually tempers his tremendous seriousness, he belongs to +London. Among the men of our time who have done creative writing I can +think of no other about whom this can be so precisely stated._ + +_It was in the opening years of the century that I first began to +notice his work. His name was appearing in the columns of a London +morning newspaper, since absorbed by the_ Daily News, _over articles +which, if my memory is not at fault, were mainly concerned with the +life of Thames side. They were written with extraordinary care. The man +who did them had, clearly, no competitor in Fleet Street. And he +furnishes a striking illustration of the chances and misfits of the +journalistic life. When, after some years of absence in the Far East, I +was able to fit a person to the writing which had so long attracted me, +I found H. M. Tomlinson on the regular reporting staff of a great +London newspaper. A man born for the creation of beauty in words was +doing daily turn along with the humble chronicler of metropolitan +trivialities._ + +_A year or two before the war the quality of his mind and of his style +was revealed in_ THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE--_a "narrative of the voyage of +the tramp steamer_ Capella, _from Swansea to Para in the Brazils, and +thence two thousand miles along the forests of the Amazon and Madeira +Rivers to the San Antonio Falls," returning by Barbados, Jamaica, and +Tampa. Its author called it merely "an honest book of travel." It is +that no doubt; but in a degree so eminent, one is tempted to say that +an honest book of travel, when so conceived and executed, must surely +count among the noblest works of the literary artist._ + +_The great war provided almost unlimited work for men of letters, and +not seldom work that was almost as far from their ordinary business as +fighting itself. It carried Tomlinson into the guild of war +correspondents. In the early months he represented the paper to which +for some years he had been attached, the London_ Daily News. _Later, +under the co-operative scheme which emerged from the restrictive policy +adopted by all the belligerent governments, his dispatches came to be +shared among a partnership which included the London_ Times--_as odd an +arrangement for a man like Tomlinson as could well be imagined. It +would be foolish to attempt an estimate of his correspondence from +France. It was beautiful copy, but it was not war reporting. To those +of us who knew him it remained a marvel how he could do it at all. But +there was no marvel in the fact, attested by a notable variety of +witnesses, of Tomlinson as an influence and a memory, persisting until +the dispersal of the armies, as of one who was the friend of all, a +sweet and fine spirit moving untouched amid the ruin and terror, +expressing itself everywhere with perfect simplicity, and at times with +a shattering candor._ + +_From France he returned, midway in the war, to join the men who, under +the Command of H. W. Massingham, make the editorial staff of the +London_ Nation _the most brilliant company of journalists in the world. +His hand may be traced week by week in many columns and especially, in +alternate issues, on the page given up to the literary_ causerie. + +_To the readers of books Tomlinson is known at present by_ THE SEA +AND THE JUNGLE _alone. The war, it may be, did something to retard +its fame. But the time is coming when none will dispute its right to +a place of exceptional honour among records of travel--alongside the +very few which, during the two or three decades preceding the general +overturn, had been added to the books of the great wayfaring +companions. It is remarkably unlike all others, in its union of +accurate chronicle with intimate self-revelation; and, although it is +the sustained expression of a mood, it is extremely quotable. I choose +as a single example this scene, from the description of the_ Capella's +_first day on the Para River._ + + _There was seldom a sign of life but the infrequent snowy herons, + and those curious brown fowl, the ciganas. The sun was flaming on + the majestic assembly of the storm. The warm air, broken by our + steamer, coiled over us in a lazy flux.... Sometimes we passed + single habitations on the water side. Ephemeral huts of palm-leaves + were forced down by the forest, which overhung them, to wade on + frail stilts. A canoe would be tied to a toy jetty, and on the + jetty a sad woman and several naked children would stand, with + no show of emotion, to watch us go by. Behind them was the + impenetrable foliage. I thought of the precarious tenure on earth + of these brown folk with some sadness, especially as the day was + going. The easy dominance of the wilderness, and man's intelligent + morsel of life resisting it, was made plain when we came suddenly + upon one of his little shacks secreted among the aqueous roots of a + great tree, cowering, as it were, between two of the giant's toes. + Those brown babies on the jetties never cheered us. They watched + us, serious and forlorn. Alongside their primitive huts were a few + rubber trees, which we knew by their scars. Late in the afternoon + we came to a large cavern in the base of the forest, a shadowy + place where at last we did see a gathering of the folk. A number of + little wooden crosses peeped above the floor in the hollow. The + sundering floods and the forest do not always keep these folk from + congregation, and the comfort of the last communion._ + +_If the reader is also a writer, he will feel the challenge of that +passage--its spiritual quality, its rhythm, its images. And he will +know what gifts of mind, and what toil, have gone to its making._ + +OLD JUNK _is not, in the same organic sense, a book. The sketches and +essays of which it is composed are of different years and, as a glance +will show, of a wide diversity of theme. The lover of the great book +will be at home with the perfect picture of the dunes, as well as with +the two brilliantly contrasted voyages; while none who can feel the +touch of the interpreter will miss the beauty of the pieces that may be +less highly wrought._ + +_As to Tomlinson's future I would not venture a prediction. +Conceivably, when the horror has become a memory that can be lived with +and transfused, he may write one of the living books enshrining the +experience of these last five years. But, just as likely he may not. I +subscribe, in ending this rough note, to a judgment recently delivered +by a fellow worker that among all the men writing in England today +there is none known to us whose work reveals a more indubitable sense +of the harmonies of imaginative prose._ + +S. K. RATCLIFFE. + +_New York, Christmas, 1919._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER PAGE + +FOREWORD BY S. K. RATCLIFFE 11 + + I. THE AFRICAN COAST 21 + + II. T HE CALL 47 + + III. OLD JUNK 58 + + IV. BED-BOOKS AND NIGHT-LIGHTS 65 + + V. TRANSFIGURATION 75 + + VI. THE PIT MOUTH 80 + + VII. INITIATION 86 + + VIII. THE ART OF WRITING 92 + + IX. A FIRST IMPRESSION 100 + + X. THE DERELICT 107 + + XI. THE VOYAGE OF THE _Mona_ 118 + + XII. THE LASCAR'S WALKING-STICK 136 + + XIII. THE EXTRA HAND 144 + + XIV. THE SOU'-WESTER 152 + + XV. ON LEAVE 157 + + XVI. THE DUNES 165 + + XVII. BINDING A SPELL 174 + +XVIII. A DIVISION ON THE MARCH 179 + + XIX. HOLLY-HO! 185 + + XX. THE RUINS 195 + + XXI. LENT, 1918 201 + + + + +OLD JUNK + + + + +I. The African Coast + + +I + +She is the steamship _Celestine_, and she is but a little lady. The +barometer has fallen, and the wind has risen to hunt the rain. I do not +know where _Celestine_ is going, and, what is better, do not care. This +is December and this is Algiers, and I am tired of white glare and +dust. The trees have slept all day. They have hardly turned a leaf. All +day the sky was without a flaw, and the summer silence outside the +town, where the dry road goes between hedges of arid prickly pears, was +not reticence but vacuity. But I sail tonight, and so the barometer is +falling, and I do not know where _Celestine_ will take me. I do not +care where I go with one whose godparents looked at her and called her +that. + +There is one place called Jidjelli we shall see, and there is another +called Collo; and there are many others, whose names I shall never +learn, tucked away in the folds of the North African hills where they +come down to the sea between Algiers and Carthage. They will reveal +themselves as I find my way to Tripoli of Barbary. I am bound for +Tripoli, without any reason except that I like the name and admire +_Celestine_, who is going part of the journey. + +But the barometer, wherever I am, seems to know when I embark. It +falls. When I went aboard the wind was howling through the shipping in +the harbour of Algiers. And again, _Celestine_ is French, and so we can +do little more than smile at each other to make visible the friendship +of our two great nations. A cable is clanking slowly, and sailors run +and shout in great excitement, doing things I can see no reason for, +because it is as dark and stormy as the forty days. + +Algiers is a formless cluster of lower stars, and presently those stars +begin to revolve about us as though the wind really had got the sky +loose. The _Celestine_ is turning her head for the sea. The stars then +speed by our masts and funnel till the last is gone. Good-bye, Algiers! + +_Celestine_ begins to curtsy, and at last becomes somewhat hysterical. +At night, in a high wind, she seems but a poor little body to be out +alone, with me. Tripoli becomes more remote than I thought it to be in +the early afternoon, when the French sailor talked to me in a cafe +while he drank something so innocently pink that it could not account +altogether for his vivacity and sudden open friendship for a shy alien. +He wanted me to elope with _Celestine_. He wanted to show me his +African shore, to see his true Mediterranean. I had travelled from +Morocco to Algiers, and was tired of tourist trains, historic ruins, +hotels, Arabs selling picture-postcards and worse, and girls dancing +the dance of the Ouled-Nails to the privileged who had paid a few +francs to see them do it. I had observed that tranquil sea; and in +places, as at Oran, had seen in the distance terraces of coloured rock +poised in enchantment between a blue ceiling and a floor of malachite. + +That sea is now on our port beam. It goes before an inshore gale, and +lifts us high, turns us giddy with a sudden betrayal and descent; and +does it again, and again. Africa has vanished. Where Algiers probably +was there are but several frail stars far away in the dark that soar in +a hurry, and then collapse into the deep and are doused. + +But here is le Capitaine. There is no need, of course, to be anxious +for _Celestine_. If her master is not a sailor, then all the signs are +wrong. He looks at me roguishly. Ah! His ship rolls. But the mistake, +it is not his. What would I have? She was built in England. _Voila!_ + +He is a little dark man, with quick, questioning eyes, and hair like a +clothesbrush. His short alert hair, his raised and querulous eyebrows, +his taut moustaches, and a bit of beard that hangs like a dagger from +his under lip, give him the appearance of constant surprise and +fretfulness. When he is talking to me he is embarrassingly playful--but +I shall show him presently, with fair luck, that my inelastic Saxon +putty can transmute itself, can also volatilise in abandonment to +sparkling nonsense; yet not tonight--not tonight, monsieur. He is so +gay and friendly to me whenever he sees me. But when one of the staff +does that which is not down in the book, I become alarmed. Monsieur +bangs the table till the cruet-stoppers leap out, and his eyes are +unpleasant. Yes, he is the master. He rises, and shakes his forefinger +at the unfortunate till his hand is a quivering haze and his speech a +blast. "Ou--e--e--eh!" cries the skipper at last, when the unfortunate +is on the run. + +He has an idea I cannot read the menu, so when an omelette is served he +informs me, in case I should suppose it is a salad. He makes helpful +farmyard noises. There is no mistaking eggs. There is no mistaking +pork. But I think he has the wrong pantomime for the ship's beef, +unless French horses have the same music as English cows. After the +first dinner, I was indiscreet enough to refuse the cognac with the +coffee. "Ah!" he chided, smiling with craft, and shaking a knowing +finger at me. He could read my native weakness. I was discovered. +"Viskee! You 'ave my viskee!" A dreadful doubt seized me, and I would +have refused, but repressed my panic, and pretended he had found my +heart. + +He rose, and shouted a peremptory order. A little private cabinet was +opened. A curious bottle was produced, having a deadly label in red, +white, and green. "Viskee!" cried the captain in exultation. (My God!) +"Aha!" said the reader of my hidden desire, pouring out the tipple for +which he imagines I am perishing in stoic British silence. "Viskee!" I +drain off, with simulated delight, my large dose of methylated spirit. +Not for worlds would I undeceive the good fellow, not if this were +train-oil. He laughs aloud at our secret insular weakness. He knows it. +But he is our very good friend. + +All is not finished with the whisky. Out comes the master's English +Grammar, for he is wishful to know us better before I leave him. And he +shall. To this Frenchman I determine to be nobler than I was made. I +think I would teach him English all the way to Cochin-China. He writes +in his notebook, very slowly, while his tongue comes out to look on, a +sentence like this: "The nombres Francaise, they are most easy that the +English language." Then I put him right; and then he rises, reaches his +hands up to my shoulders, looks earnestly in my eyes, and la-las my +National Anthem. It may please God not to let me look so foolish as I +feel while I wait for the end of that tune; but I doubt that it does. + + +II + +Early next morning we arrived at Bougie, to get an hour's peace with +the arm of the harbour thrown about my poor _Celestine_. The deck of a +Grimsby trawler discharging fish in the Humber on a wet December +morning is no more desolating than was the look of _Celestine_ under +the mountains of Bougie; and Bougie, if you have a memory for the +coloured posters, is in the blue Mediterranean. But do I grumble? I do +not. With all the world but slops, cold iron, and squalls of sleet, I +prefer _Celestine_ to Algiers. + +Most likely you have never heard of the black Mediterranean. It is +usual to go there in winter, and write about it with a date-palm in +every paragraph, till you have got all the health and enjoyment there +is in the satisfaction of telling others that while they are choosing +cough cures you are under a sunshade on the coral strand. The truth is, +the Middle Sea in December can be as ugly as the Dogger Bank. There +were some Arab deck passengers on our coaster. One of them sat looking +at a deck rivet as motionless as a fakir, and his face had the +complexion of a half-ripe watermelon. His fellow-sufferers were only +heaps of wet and dirty linen dumped in the lee alley-way. It was bad +enough in a bunk, where you could brace your knees against the side, +and keep moderately still till you dozed off, when naturally you were +shot out sprawling into the lost drainage wandering on the erratic +floor. What those Arabs suffered on deck I cannot tell you. I never +went up to find out. At Bougie they seemed to have left it all to +Allah, with the usual result. It was clear, from a glance at those +piles of rags, that the Arab is no more native to Algeria than the +Esquimaux. I was much nearer home than the Arabs. That shining coast +which occasionally I had surprised from Oran, which seemed afloat on +the sea, was no longer a vision of magic, the unsubstantial work of +Iris, an illusionary cloud of coral, amber, and amethyst. It was the +bare bones of this old earth, as sombre and foreboding as any ruin of +granite under the wrack of the bleak north. + +As for Bougie, these African villages are built but for bright +sunlight. They change to miserable and filthy ruins in the rain, their +white walls blotched and scabrous, and their paths mud tracks between +the styes. Their lissom and statuesque inhabitants become softened and +bent, and pad dejectedly through the muck as though they were ashamed +to live, but had to go on with it. The palms which look so well in +sunny pictures are besoms up-ended in a drizzle. They have not that +equality with the storm which makes the Sussex beech and oak, heavily +based and strong-armed, stand with a look of might and roar at the +charges of the Channel gale. By this you will see that Bougie must wait +until I call that way again. From the look of the sky, too, there is no +doubt we are in for a spell of the kind of weather I never expected to +meet in Africa. I was a stranger there, but I knew the language of +those squadrons of dark clouds driving into the bay. + +The northern sky was full of their gloomy keels. There were intervals +when the full expanse of Bougie Bay became visible, with its concourse +of mountains crowded to the shore. At the base of the dark declivities +the combers were bursting, and the spume towered on the gale like grey +smoke. Out of the foam rose harsh rubble and screes to incline against +broken precipices, and those stark walls were interrupted by mid-air +slopes of grass which appeared ready to avalanche into the tumult +below, but remained, livid areas of a dim mass which rose into dizzy +pinnacles and domes, increasing the tumbling menace of the sky. A fleet +of clouds of deep draught ran into Africa from the north; went aground +on those crags, were wrecked and burst, their contents streaming from +them and hiding the aerial reef on which they had struck. The land +vanished, till only Bougie and its quay and the _Celestine_ remained, +with one last detached fragment of mountain high over us. That, too, +dissolved. There was only our steamer and the quay at last. + +I thought our master would not dare to put out from there, but he cared +as little for the storm as for the steward. His last bales were no +sooner in the lighters than he made for Jidjelli. But Jidjelli daunted +even him. The nearer we got, the worse it looked. My own feeling was +that the gathering seas had taken charge of our scallop, a cork in the +surf, and were pitching her, helpless, towards terrible walls built of +night out of a base of thunder and bursting waters. I gripped a rail, +and saw a vague range of summits appear above the nearing walls and +steadily develop towards distinction. Then the howling gale began to +scream, the ceiling lowered and darkened, and merged with the rocks, +reducing the world but to our _Celestine_ in the midst of near flashes +of white in an uproar. When presently a little daylight came into chaos +to give it shape again, there was an inch of hail on our deck, and the +mountains had been changed to white marble. We saw a red light burn low +in the place where Jidjelli ought to be, a signal that it was +impossible to enter. Our skipper put about. + +That is all I know of Jidjelli, and all I wanted to know on such an +evening. The sound of the surf on the rocks was better to hear when it +was not so close. We followed that coast all night while I lay awake, +shaking to the racing of the propeller; and I blessed the unknown +engineers of the North Country who took forethought of nights of that +kind when doing their best for _Celestine_; for, though bruised, I +still loved her above Algiers and Timgad. She had character, she had +set her course, and she was holding steadily to it, and did not pray +the uncompassionate to change its face. + + +III + +For more than a week we washed about in the surf of a high, dark coast +towards Tunis. We might have been on the windward side of Ultima Thule. +Supposing you could have been taken miraculously from your fogs and +midday lamps of London, and put with me in the _Celestine_, and told +that that sullen land looming through the murk could be yours, if you +could guess its name, then you would have guessed nothing below the +fortieth parallel. + +No matter; when you were told, you would have laughed at your loss. Now +you understood why it was called the Dark Continent. It looked the home +of slavery, murder, rhinoceroses, the Congo, war, human sacrifices, and +gorillas. It had the forefront of the world of skulls and horrors, +ultimatums, mining concessions, chains, and development. Its rulers +would be throned on bone-heaps. You will say (of course you will say) +that I saw Africa like that because I was weary of the place. Not at +all. I was merely looking at it. The feeling had been growing on me +since first I saw Africa at Oran, where I landed. The longer I stay, +the more depressed I get. + +This has nothing to do with the storm. This African shadow does not +chill you because you wish you were home, and home is far away. It does +not come of your rare and lucky idleness, in which you have to do +nothing but enjoy yourself; generally a sufficient reason for +melancholy, though rarely so in my own case. No, Africa itself is the +reason. There is an invisible emanation from its soil, the aura of evil +in antiquity. You cannot see it, at first you are unaware it is there, +and cannot know, therefore, what is the matter with you. This haunting +premonition is different from mere wearying and boredom. It gets worse, +the longer you stay; it goes deeper than sadness, it descends into a +conviction of something that is without hope, that is bad in its +nature, and unrepentant in its arrogant heart. When you have got so far +down you have had time to discover what that is which has put you so +low. The day may be radiant, the sky just what you had hoped to find in +Africa, and the people in the market-place a lively and chromatic +jangle; but the shadow of what we call inhumanity (when we are trying +to persuade ourselves that humanity is something very different) chills +and darkens the heart. + +Yet the common sky of North Africa might be the heaven of the first +morning, innocent of knowledge that night is to come. It is not a hard +blue roof; your sight is lost in the atmosphere which is azure. The sun +more than shines; his beams ring on the rocks, and glance in colours +from the hills. From a distance the flowers on a hill slope will pour +down to the sea in such a torrent of hues that you might think the arch +of the rainbow you saw there had collapsed in the sun and was now rills +and cascades. The grove of palms holding their plumes above a white +village might be delicate pencillings on the yellow sheet of desert. +The heat is a balm. The shadows are stains of indigo on the roads and +pale walls. + + +IV + +One day we found Sfax. I went ashore at Sfax, interested in a name +quite new to me. The guide-book did not even mention it; perhaps it was +not worth while; no ruins, mummies, trams or hotels there, of course. +Maybe it was only the name of a man, or a grass, or a sort of +phosphate. Sfax! Well, anyhow, I had long wished for Africa, anywhere +in Africa, and here I was, not eager to get home again, but not +disinclined. What I had seen of it so far was a rather too frequented +highway opposite the coast of Europe--a complementary establishment. +Progress had macadamised it. Commerce and its wars had graded and +uniformed and drilled its life. Its silent people marched in ranks, as +it were, along mapped roads foredoomed, and its mills went round. Its +life was expressed for export. It was on the way to Manchester and +success. Of all the infernal uses to which a country can be put there +is none like development. Let every good savage make incantation +against it, or, if to some extent he has been developed, cross himself +against the fructification of the evil. As for us whites, we are +eternally damned, for we cannot escape the consequences of our past +cleverness. The Devil has us on a complexity of strings, and some day +will pull the whole lot tight. But Sfax! Had I escaped? Was there a +chance? + +I found a city wall, a huge battlement, ancient and weathered, like an +unscalable cliff, and going through its gate was entering the shadows +of a cave. Out of the glare of the sun I went into the gloom of deep, +narrow, and mysterious passages. The sun was only on the parapets and +casements, which leaned towards each other confidentially, and left +only a ragged line of light above. These alley-ways were crowded with +camels, asses, and strange men. An understanding and sneering camel in +a narrow passage will force you to take what chance there is of escape +in desecrating a mosque, while Moslems watch you as the only Christian +there, or of going under its slobbering mouth and splay feet. It does +not care which. + +It was market-day for Sfax. There were little piles of vivid fruit +beside white walls where a broad ray of sunlight found them. There were +silversmiths at work, tent-makers, and the makers of camel harness. The +tanners had laid skins for us to walk over. There were exotic smells. I +went exploring the crooked turnings with an indifference which was +studied. I was getting an interesting time, but was distinctly +conscious of eyes, a ceaseless stream of eyes that floated by, watchful +though making no sign. Several times I found myself jostled with some +roughness. It occurred to me that I had heard on the ship that Sfax was +the only town which had offered resistance to the French; its men have +a fine reputation throughout Tunisia, which they do something now and +then to maintain, in consequence. They certainly appeared a sturdy and +virile lot. They were not listless, like the Arabs of Algeria, who have +nothing to show for themselves but the haughty and aloof bearing of the +proud but beaten. + +Having discovered that the enemy was vulnerable though strong, the men +of Sfax go through the day now with the directed activity of those who +once had got the worst of it, but have a hope of doing better next +time. They gave me a lively and adventurous scene. They moved with +silent and stealthy quickness. Their eyes glanced sideways from under +their cowls. Their hands were hidden under their jibbahs. A few of them +stared with the hate of the bereft. It is not possible to face +everybody in a press which moves in all directions, and I was the only +European who was there. + +Passing a mosque, where I noticed the Moslems had attempted, but had +not completed, the obliteration of some representations of birds,--so +the mosque was once, evidently, a place where other gods had been +worshipped,--I hesitated, wishing to look closer into this curiosity, +but recollected myself, and was passing on. An Arab in the turban of +one who had been to Mecca was squatting cross-legged on the old marble +pavement outside the mosque, and I just took in that he was a fine +venerable fellow with an important beard, with a look of wisdom and +experience in his steady glance from under the strong arches of his +eyebrows that made me wish I knew Arabic, and could squat beside him, +and gossip of the wide world. As I turned he said quietly, "Good day!" + +Now I thought perhaps I was bewitched, but turned and looked at him. +"How are you?" he asked. At that moment, when his eyes looking upward +had a smile of understanding mischief, and in such an alien city as +Sfax, I was prepared to declare there is but one God and Mahomet is His +prophet. For that sort of thing comes easy to me; and would have been +quite true, as far as it went. Then I went back to him, and fearing +that after all I might be addressing but the parrot which had already +exhausted its vocabulary, I tried it on him: "Shall I take my boots off +here, father, or may I sit down with you?" + +"Sit down," he said. + +He was a man of medicine. He sold there prophylactics against +small-pox, adultery, blindness, the evil eye, sterility, or any other +trouble which you thought threatened you. If a man feared for the +faithfulness of his spouse, it seems Father the Hadj could secure it +with a charm, and so allow him to spend the night elsewhere in perfect +enjoyment and content. That is what the quiet old cynic told me, and +invited me to inspect his display of amulets and fetishes, coloured +glass tablets with Arabic inscriptions, and a deal of stuff which +looked unreasonable to me, articles the holy man either could not or +would not resolve into sense. + +His English, which he had learned as a shipping agent for the pilgrim +traffic, soon reached its narrow limits, to my sorrow. When it left +common objects and we wished to compare our world (for there is no +doubt he was an experienced and understanding elder who knew to within +a little what he might expect of his God and of his fellows), we were +left smiling at each other, and had to guess the rest. Yet at least the +bazaar could witness this good Moslem of age and admitted wisdom +sitting opposite a dubious Christian in a companionable manner; and +there was that testimony to my advantage. They even watched him draw +his finger across his throat in serious and energetic pantomime, and +saw me nod in grave appreciation, when he was trying to make me +understand what was his sympathy for the Christian conquerors of Sfax. + +I went outside the landward gate of the city, and looked out over the +level of brilliant sand which stretched out from there to Lake Tchad. +What a voyage! What a lure! Perhaps there is no more perilous journey +on earth than that, and if a traveller would vanish into the past, into +such Oriental countries as the voyagers of Hakluyt saw with wonder, +then to leave Sfax, and go across country to the Niger, would equal +what once came of fooling with the arcana of the Djinn. Though, after +all, one would like to emerge again, to tell the tale to the children; +and the whole dubiety of it is in that last difficulty. It is almost +certain the magic would be too powerful. + +About the bright yellow sea of the desert which came up to the high +cliffs of the town, the squatting camels made dark hummocks. Strings of +donkeys converged on the city gate bearing water-pots and baskets of +charcoal. Sometimes a line of camels swayed outwards through the crowd, +disappeared among the shrines, going south. Watching such a caravan go +was the same as watching a ship leave port. + +By the wayside was a huckster. He banged a tomtom till he had gathered +a crowd from the loose concourse of men who had come long journeys with +esparto grass, or gums and ostrich plumes, and much else from the +secret region inland. He was selling cotton shirts, and was an +entertaining villain. By the corners of his mouth his humour was leery. +He did not laugh, but his grimaces were funny. The variegated crowd and +that huckster was too enticing, and forgetting I had not seen one of my +own kind since leaving the ship, and that my face among those black and +brown masks was as loud as the tomtom, I mingled my outrageous tourist +tweeds with the graceful folds of the robes. The huckster kept glancing +at me, and from grave side-long glances that crowd of men went to the +extraordinary length of grim smiles. Suddenly I recognized the trick of +that Arab cheapjack. It may be seen at work in Poplar, my native parish +to which the ships come, when a curious and innocent Chinaman joins the +group about the fluent quack in the market place. + +As soon as dignity permitted I passed on, and my dignity did not keep +me waiting for any length of time. + +Uncertain, and not a little nervous, I wandered among some plantations +of olives and false peppers, where the domes of the tombs floated like +white bubbles on the foliage. Here an Arab beckoned to me, and told me +he had been watching me for some time--for he was an English medical +missionary in disguise--and warned me that these gardens and shrines +were quite the wrong place to wander in alone. It appears that only a +few days since the flame of insurrection flashed down the bazaar, +licked up a few French soldiers who happened to be there, and had +almost got a hold before the garrison appeared and doused it. He took +me to his house, with its windows heavily barred, for there his +predecessor had been murdered. (If this could happen at the +starting-place for Lake Tchad, then let the idea go.) + +From the flat roof of the doctor's house I smelt the dung of ages, +fought with legions of flies, and looked down on a large quadrangle of +hay and stable muck, where camels had carefully folded themselves on +the ground, and chewed reflectively, their eyes half closed; and large +drowsy asses mechanically fanned their ears at the loathly swarms. The +missionary surmised that the caravanserai below was the perfect +reflection of one we had heard more about, which was once at Bethlehem. +The square was enclosed with flat-roofed stables, and it being a busy +time they were all occupied. The first one, immediately below us, was +filled with a family of Kabyles, which consisted chiefly of a +magnificent virago of a wife, tattooed, with a fine gold ring in her +nostrils, who seemed to have a trying life with her mild and +contemplative old husband. She had more children than one could count +without giving the matter that close attention which might be +misinterpreted. She cradled them in the manger every night. Loud as her +voice was, though, I could almost hear the old man smile as he walked +away from her. They had two contemptuous camels who never lifted an +eyelid when she raised her voice to them, but chewed calmly on, with +faces turned impassively towards the New Jerusalem of camels, where +viragoes are not; and several resigned asses who appeared to have +handed their souls back to their Maker, because souls are but extra +trammels in this place of sorrow. + +Next door to them was a regular tenant who bred goats, and fed them out +of British biscuit-tins. Beyond them the stable was occupied by a party +of swarthy ruffians who had arrived with a cargo of esparto grass. In +the far corner, a family, crowded out, had been living for weeks under +a structure of horrible rags. Smoke, issuing from a dozen seams, gave +their home the look of a smouldering manure heap. + + + +V + +You probably know there are place-names which, when whispered +privately, have the unreasonable power of translating the spirit east +of the sun and west of the moon. They cannot be seen in print without a +thrill. The names in the atlas which do that for me are a motley lot, +and you, who see no magic in them, but have your own lunacy in another +phase, would laugh at mine. Celebes, Acapulco, Para, Port Royal, +Cartagena, the Marquesas, Panama, the Mackenzie River, Tripoli of +Barbary. They are some of mine. Rome should be there, I know, and +Athens, and Byzantium. But they are not, and that is all I can say +about it. + +Why give reasons for our preferences? How often have our preferences +any reason? Maybe some old scoundrel of an ancestor who made a fortune +(all lost since) as a thief on the Spanish main, whispers Panama to me +when my mind is tired. Others may make magic with Ostend, Biarritz, or +Ancoats; and they are just as lucky as the man who obtains the spell by +looking at the Dry Tortugas on the map. + +When I set out from Newport on this voyage, I did not expect to see +Tripoli of Barbary. We have never considered the possibility that our +favourite place-names really do stand for stones that have veritable +shapes and smells under a sun which comes and goes daily. Nor was my +steamer exactly the sort of craft which could, by the look of her, ever +attain to the coast of Barbary. What would a steamer know about it? She +would never fetch the landfall of a dream. I was not surprised, +therefore, when she fetched Tripoli quite wrong; not the place at all +for which I was looking on the southern horizon. But then, she was but +taking crockery there, in crates; and crockery is less vulnerable, is +rough freight, compared to a fancy. The crockery, however, got to its +Tripoli quite safely. + +We anchored; and there was Tripoli, standing round a little bay, with +its buildings, variously coloured, crowded to the west, and slender +minarets standing as masts over the flat decks of the houses. I landed +at a narrow water-gate, and the Turkish officials regarded me as though +I had come to remove the country. When I wished to embark again, these +curious people in uniform were even more serious than when I arrived. +After a long hesitation, permission was given me niggardly to leave +Tripoli, and my ship's boatmen pointed out the urgent need to supply a +certain rowboat in the bay with that morsel of paper. To lose that tiny +document would have a shocking result, for a warship was in the bay to +support the rowboat. We passed that warship. Some day a hilarious +traveller will tear his document into fragments, and that warship will +fire at him, and sink. The system here, a mere tabulation of fear and +suspicion, those reflexes of evildoers who have the best of reasons to +be jealous of their neighbours, is protective exclusiveness in its +perfect flower, and perhaps it would be better to be really dead than +to live under it as a warm, law-abiding corpse. + +I should guess that, with a slight magnification to make the object +plainer, there are three soldiers to each worker in North Africa. On +from Oran the gaudy fellow in uniform has been very conspicuous, the +most leisured and prosperous of the inhabitants, and one came +unwillingly to the conclusion that it is more profitable to smoke +cigarettes in a country than to grow corn in it. As for Tripoli, its +uniformed protectors hide the protected; but perhaps its natives have +learned how to live by killing one another. It is possible I have not +divined the more subtle ways of God's providence. + +Tripoli, like other towns oh these shores, looks as though it were +sloughing away. Where stones fall, there they lie. In the centre of the +town is a marble triumphal arch in honour of Marcus Aurelius. Age would +account for much of its ruin, but not all; yet it still stands cold, +haughty, austere, though decrepit, in Tripolitan mud, with mean stucco +and plaster buildings about it. The arch itself is filled in, and is +used as a dwelling. Its tenant is a greengrocer, and the monument to +Marcus Aurelius has an odour of garlic; but it need not be supposed +that that was specially repugnant to me. How could the white marble of +Marcus, to say nothing of a warmer philosophy no less austere, be +acceptable to our senses unless translated, with a familiar odour of +garlic, by modern greengrocers? I shall think more of Tripoli of +Barbary in future, when looking back at it through a middle-aged pipe, +when the chains have got me at last. + +_January 1907._ + + + + +II. The Call + + +When the train left me at Clayton Station, the only passenger to +alight, its hurried retreat down the long straight of converging +metals, a rapidly diminishing cube, seemed to be measuring for me the +isolation of the place. Clayton appeared to be two railway platforms +and a row of elms across an empty road. After the last rumble of the +train, which had the note of a distant cry of derision, there closed in +the quiet of a place where affairs had not even begun. It was raining, +there was a little luggage, I did not know the distance to the village, +and the porter had disappeared. A defective gutter-spout overhead was +the leaking conduit for all the sounds and movement of the countryside. + +Then I saw a boy humped into the shelter of a shrub which leaned over +the station fence. He was reading. Before him was a hand-cart lettered +"Humphrey Monk, Grocer and General Dealer, Clayton." The boy wore +spectacles which, when he looked at me, magnified his eyes so that the +lad seemed a luminous and disembodied stare. I saw only the projection +of his enlarged gaze. He promised to take my luggage to Clayton. I +walked through three miles of steady rain to the village, by a stretch +of marshland so hushed by the nearness of the draining sky that the +land might have been what it seemed at a little distance: merely a +faint presentment of fields solvent in the wet. Its green melted into +the outer grey at a short distance where rows of elms were smeared. +There was nothing beyond. + +This old village of Clayton is five miles inland from Clayton-on-Sea, +that new and popular resort hardened with asphalt and concrete, to +which city folk retire for a change in the summer. During the winter +months many of the shops of the big town are closed till summer brings +the holiday-makers again. The porticoes of the abandoned premises fill +with street litter, old paper, and straws. The easterly winds cut the +life out of the streets, the long ranks of automatic machines look out +across the empty parade, and rust, and the lines of the pier-deck +advance desolately far into the wind and grey sea, straight and +uninterrupted. It is more than barren then, Clayton-on-Sea, for man has +been there, builded busily and even ornately, loaded the town with +structures for even his minor whims in idleness; and forsaken it all. +So it will look on the Last Day. The advertisements clamour pills and +hair-dye to a town which seems as if the Judgment Day has passed and +left the husk of life. So I was driven to the original Clayton, the +place which gave the name, the little inland village that did, when I +found it, show some signs of welcome life. It was a clump of white +cottages in a vague cloud of trees. It had some chimneys smoking, there +was a man several fields away, and a dog sitting in a porch barked at +me. Here was a little of the warmth of human contiguity. + +When night came, and the village was but a few chance and unrelated +lights, there was the choice between my bedroom and the taproom of the +inn where I lodged. In the bedroom, crowning a chest of drawers, was a +large Bible, and on the wall just above was a glass case of shabby +sea-birds, their eyes so placed that they appeared to be looking up +from Holy Writ with a look of such fatuous rapture that one's idea of +immortality became associated with bodies dusty, stuffed, and wired. +(Oh, the wind and the rain!) Yet there was left the bar-parlour; and +there, usually, was a dim lamp showing but a table with assorted empty +mugs, a bar with bottles and a mirror, but nobody to serve, and a +picture of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes. + +There was but one other light in Clayton which showed sanctuary after +dark for the stranger. It was in Mr. Monk's shop. His shop at least had +its strange interests in its revelation of the diverse needs of +civilized homes, for Mr. Monk sold everything likely to be wanted +urgently enough by his neighbours to make a journey to greater Clayton +prohibitive. In one corner of his shop a young lady was caged, for it +was also the post office. The interior of the store was confused with +boxes, barrels, bags, and barricades of smaller tins and jars, with +alleys for sidelong progress between them. I do not think any order +ever embarrassed Mr. Monk. Without hesitation he would turn, sure of +his intricate world, from babies' dummies to kerosene. There were cards +hanging from the rafters bearing briar pipes, bottles of lotion for the +hair of schoolchildren, samples of sauce, and stationery. + +His shop had its own native smell. It was of coffee, spices, rock-oil, +cheese, bundles of wood, biscuits, and jute bags, and yet was none of +these things, for their separate flavours were so blended by old +association that they made one indivisible smell, peculiar, but not +unpleasant, when you were used to it. I found Mr. Monk's barrel of soda +quite a cherishable seat on a dull night, for the grocer's lamp was +then the centre of a very dark world. Around it and beyond was only the +blackness and silence of vacuity. And the grocer himself, if not busy, +would give me his casual and valuable advice on the minor frailties of +the human, and they seemed as engaging and confusing in their +directness as a child's; for Mr. Monk was large and bland, with a pale, +puffy, and unsmiling face, and only betrayed his irony with a slow wink +when he was sure you were not deceived. He knew much about the gentry +around, those bored and weary youths in check coats, riding breeches, +and large pipes, and the young ladies in pale homespun costumes who had +rude and familiar words to all they judged were their equals, and were +accompanied invariably by Aberdeen terriers. + +One evening I spoke to Mr. Monk of his boy. The boy, I said, seemed a +strange little fellow. Mr. Monk, in his soiled, white apron, turned on +me, and said nothing at first, but tapped his bald head solemnly. +"Can't make him out," he said. "I think this is where it is"--and +pressed a fat thumb against his head again. "But you have to put up +with any boy you can get here." He sighed. "The bright kids go. Clear +out. There's nothing fer 'em here but farm labour an' the poor rate. I +don't know how the farmers about here could make a do of it if we +didn't pay rates to keep their labourers from dying off. My boys get +fed up. Off they go, 'nd I doan' blame 'em. One of 'em's in a racin' +stable now, doin' well. Another's got a potman's job London somewhere. +Doin' well. But the kid I've got now, he'll stop. No ginger in that +boy. Can't see anything five minutes off, either. Must be under his +nose, and your finger shouting at it. He's got a cloudy mind. Yet he's +clever, in his way. There's the door-mat of the shop. As soon as any +one puts a foot on that mat, the clock in my kitchen strikes two. All +his fake. But he does rile the customers. Silly young fool. If there's +two parcels to deliver, it's the wrong one gets first chance." + +In a land where discovery had not gone beyond the blacksmith's forge +and the arable fields, a native boy who had turned a door-mat into a +watchdog was an interesting possibility. There the boy was at that +moment, stepping off his responsive mat, ill-clad, the red nose of his +meagre face almost as evident as his magnified stare of surprised +inquiry, and his mouth open. Mr. Monk chaffed him. I spoke with some +seriousness to him, but he was shy, and gave no answer except some +throat noises. Yet presently he ceased to rub a boot up and down one +leg, and became articulate. He mumbled that he knew the telegraph +instrument too. ("Oho!" said Mr. Monk, looking interested. "You do, do +yer? What about learning not to leave Mrs. Brown's parcel at Mrs. +Pipkin's?") Had I ever been to London, the boy asked, his big eyes full +on my face. Had I ever seen a Marconi station? I talked to him, perhaps +unwisely, of some of the greater affairs. He said nothing. His mouth +remained open and his stare full-orbed. + +There was one grey, still Sunday when it was not raining, the grey sky +being exhausted, and I met the grocer's boy a little distance from the +village, sitting on a fence, reading. The boy closed his book when he +saw me, but not before I had noticed that the volume was open at a page +showing one of those highly technical diagrams of involved machinery +which only the elect may read. I took the book--it was a manual of +civil engineering--and asked questions with some humility; for before +the man who understands the manipulating of metals and can make living +servants for himself out of pipes, wheels, and valves, I stand as would +a primitive or an innocent and confiding girl before the magician who +interprets for them oracles. With the confidence of long familiarity +and the faint hauteur of shyness he explained some of the diagrams in +which, at that moment, he was interested. + +We talked of them, and of Clayton; for I wished to know how this +grocer's boy, who went about masked with a mouth open a little +fatuously, an insignificant face, goggles, and a hand-truck, himself of +no account in a flat and unremarkable place aside from the press of +life's affairs, had discovered there were hills to which he could lift +his eyes after those humiliating interviews with Mr. Monk concerning +the wrong delivery of cheese and bacon. I was aware of the means by +which news of the outer world got to Clayton. It came in a popular +halfpenny paper, and that outer world must therefore have seemed to +Clayton to be all aeroplanes, musical-comedy girls, dog shows, and Mr. +Lloyd George. The grocer's boy got his tongue free at last, and talked. +He was halt and obscure, but I thought I saw a mind beating against the +elms and stones of the village, and repelled by the concrete, asphalt, +and lodging-houses of the seaside place. But I am impressionable, too. +It may have been my fancy. What the boy finished with was: "There's no +chance here. You never hear of anything." + +You never heard of anything. That countryside really looked remote +enough from the centre of affairs, from the place where men, +undistracted by the news and pictures of the halfpenny illustrated +Press, were getting work done. Clayton was deaf and dumb. Some miles +away the smoke of the London train was streaming across the dim fields +like a comet. We both stood watching that comet going sure and bright +to its destiny, leaving Clayton behind, regardless of us, and as though +all we there were nothing worth. We were outside the pull of life's +spinning hub. Beyond and remote from us things would be happening; but +no voice or pulse of life could vibrate us, merged as we were within +the inelastic silence of Clayton. + +We walked back to the village, and the boy said good-night, passing +through a white gate to a cottage unseen at that late hour of the +evening. Near midnight I left my stuffed birds, with their fixed and +upturned gaze, and went into the open, where above the shapeless lumps +of massive dark of Clayton the stars were detaching their arrows, for +the night was clear and frosty at last. Sirius, pulsing and +resplendent, seemed nearer and more vital than anything in the village. + +I walked as far as the white gate of the cottage where I had left Mr. +Monk's boy; and there he was again, to my surprise, at that hour. He +came forward. At first he appeared to be agitated; but as he talked +brokenly I saw he was exalted. He was no grocer's boy then. The lad +half dragged me, finding I did not understand him, towards his home. We +went round to the back of the sleeping cottage, and found a little +shed. On a bench in that shed a candle was burning in a ginger-beer +bottle. By the candle was a structure meaningless to me, having nothing +of which I could make a guess. It was fragmentary and idle, the +building which a child makes of household utensils, naming it anything +to its fancy. There were old jam-pots, brass door-knobs, squares of +india-rubber, an electric bell, glass rods, cotton reels, and thin +wires which ran up to the roof out of sight. + +"Listen!" said the grocer's boy imperatively, holding up a finger. I +remained intent and suspicious, wondering. Nothing happened. I was +turning to ask the lad why I should listen, for the shed was very +still, and then I saw the hammer of the bell lift itself, as though +alive. Some erratic and faint tinkling began. "That's my wireless," +said the grocer's boy, his eyes extraordinarily bright. "I've only just +finished it. Who is calling us?" + + + + +III. Old Junk + + +Business had brought the two of us to an inn on the West Coast, and all +its windows opened on a wide harbour, hill-enclosed. Only small +coasting craft were there, mostly ketches; but we had topsail schooners +also and barquantines, those ascending and aerial rigs that would be +flamboyant but for the transverse spars of the foremast, giving one who +scans them the proper apprehension of stability and poise. + +To come upon a craft rigged so, though at her moorings and with sails +furled, her slender poles upspringing from the bright plane of a +brimming harbour, is to me as rare and sensational a delight as the +rediscovery, when idling with a book, of a favourite lyric. That when +she is at anchor; but to see her, all canvas set for light summer airs, +at exactly that distance where defects and harshness in her apparel +dissolve, but not so far away but the white feathers at her throat are +plain, is to exult in the knowledge that man once reached such +greatness that he imagined and created a thing which was consonant with +the stateliness of the slow ranging of great billows, and the soaring +density of white cumulus clouds, and with the brightness and compelling +mystery of the far horizon at sundown. + +Some mornings, when breakfast-time came with the top of the tide, we +could look down on the plan of a deck beneath, with its appurtenances +and junk, casks, houses, pumps, and winches, rope and spare spars, +binnacle and wheel, perhaps a boat, the regular deck seams curving and +persisting under all. An old collier ketch she might be, with a name +perhaps as romantic as the _Mary Ann_; for the owners of these little +vessels delight to honour their lady relatives. + +Away in mid-stream the _Mary Ann_ would seem but a trivial affair, no +match for the immensities about her, diminished by the vistas of shores +and beaches, and the hills. But seen close under our window you +understood why her men would match her, and think it no hardihood, with +gales and the assaults of ponderous seas. Her many timbers, so well +wrought as to appear, at a distance, a delicate and frail shape, are +really heavy. Even in so small a craft as a ketch they are massive +enough to surprise you into wondering at the cunning of shipwrights, +those artists who take gross lumps of intractable timber and metal, and +compel them to subtle mouldings and soft grace, to an image which we +know means life that moves in rhythmic loveliness. + +Talk of the art of book and picture making! There is an old fellow I +met in this village who will take the ruins of a small forest, take +pine boles, metal, cordage, and canvas, and without plans, but from the +ideal in his eye, build you the kind of lithe and dainty schooner that, +with the cadences of her sheer and moulding, and the soaring of her +masts, would keep you by her side all day in harbour; build you the +kind of girded, braced, and immaculate vessel, sound at every point, +tuned and sweet to a precision that in a violin would make a musician +flush with inspiration, a ship to ride, lissom and light, the uplifted +western ocean, and to resist the violence of vaulting seas and the +drive of hurricane. She will ride out of the storm afterwards, none to +applaud her, over the mobile hills travelling express, the rags of her +sails triumphant pennants in the gale, the beaten seas pouring from her +deck. + +He, that modest old man, can create such a being as that; and I have +heard visitors to this village, leisured and cultured folk, whose own +creative abilities amount to no more than the arranging of some +decorative art in strata of merit, talk down to the old fellow who can +think out a vessel like that after supper, and go out after breakfast +to direct the laying of her keel--talk down to him, kindly enough, of +course, and smilingly, as a "working man." + +I told you there were two of us, at this inn. We met at meals. I think +he was a commercial traveller. A tall young fellow, strongly built, a +pleasure to look at; carefully dressed, intelligent, with hard and +clear grey eyes. He had a ruddy but fastidious complexion, though he +was, I noticed, a hearty and careless eater. He was energetic and swift +in his movements, as though the world were easily read, and he could +come to quick decisions and successful executions of his desires. He +had no moments of laxity and hesitation, even after a breakfast, on a +hot morning, too, of ham and eggs drenched in coffee. He made me feel +an ineffective, delicate, and inferior being. + +He would bang out to business, after breakfast and a breezy chat with +me; and I lapsed, a lazy and shameless idler, into the window, to +wonder among the models outside, the fascinating curves of ships and +boats, as satisfying and as personal to me as music I know, as the lilt +of ballads and all that minor rhythm which wheels within the enclosing +harmonies and balance of stars and suns in their orbits. Those forms of +ships and boats are as satisfying as the lines which make the strength +and swiftness of salmon and dolphins, and the ease of the flight of +birds with great pinions; and, in a new schooner which passed this +window, on her first voyage to sea--a tall and slender ship, a being so +radiant in the sun as to look an evanescent and immaterial vision--as +inspiring and awful as the remoteness of a spiritual and lovely woman. + +"I can't make out what you see in those craft," said my companion one +morning. "They're mostly ancient tubs, and at the most they only muck +about the coast. Now a P. & O. or a Cunarder! That's something to look +at." He was looking down at me, and there was a trace of contempt in +his smile. + +He was right in a way. I felt rebuked and embarrassed, and could not +explain to him. These were the common objects of the Channel after all, +old and weather-broken, sea wagons from the Cowes point of view, source +of alarm and wonder to passengers on fine liners when they sight them +beating stubbornly against dirty winter weather, and hanging on to the +storm. Why should they take my interest more than battleships and +Cunarders? Yet I could potter about an ancient hooker or a tramp +steamer all day, when I wouldn't cross a quay to a great battleship. I +like the pungent smells of these old craft, just as I inhale the health +and odour of fir woods. I love their men, those genuine mariners, the +right diviners of sky, coast, and tides, who know exactly what their +craft will do in any combination of circumstances as well as you know +the pockets of your old coat; men who can handle a stiff and cranky +lump of patched timbers and antique gear as artfully as others would +the clever length of hollow steel with its powerful twin screws. + +But when my slightly contemptuous companion spoke I had no answer, felt +out of date and dull, a fogey and an idle man. I had no answer +ready--none that would have satisfied this brisk young man, none that +would not have seemed remote and trivial to him. + +He left me. Some other visitor had left behind Stevenson's _Ebb Tide_, +and trying to think out an excuse that would quiet the qualms I began +to feel for this idle preference of mine for old junk, I began picking +out the passages I liked. And then I came on these words of Attwater's +(though Stevenson, for certain, is speaking for himself): "Junk ... +only old junk!... Nothing so affecting as ships. The ruins of an empire +would leave me frigid, when a bit of an old rail that an old shellback +had leaned on in the middle watch would bring me up all standing." + + + + +IV. Bed-Books and Night-Lights + + +The rain flashed across the midnight window with a myriad feet. There +was a groan in outer darkness, the voice of all nameless dreads. The +nervous candle-flame shuddered by my bedside. The groaning rose to a +shriek, and the little flame jumped in a panic, and nearly left its +white column. Out of the corners of the room swarmed the released +shadows. Black spectres danced in ecstasy over my bed. I love fresh +air, but I cannot allow it to slay the shining and delicate body of my +little friend the candle-flame, the comrade who ventures with me into +the solitudes beyond midnight. I shut the window. + +They talk of the candle-power of an electric bulb. What do they mean? +It cannot have the faintest glimmer of the real power of my candle. It +would be as right to express, in the same inverted and foolish +comparison, the worth of "those delicate sisters, the Pleiades." That +pinch of star dust, the Pleiades, exquisitely remote in deepest night, +in the profound where light all but fails, has not the power of a +sulphur match; yet, still apprehensive to the mind though tremulous on +the limit of vision, and sometimes even vanishing, it brings into +distinction those distant and difficult hints--hidden far behind all +our verified thoughts--which we rarely properly view. I should like to +know of any great arc-lamp which could do that. So the star-like candle +for me. No other light follows so intimately an author's most ghostly +suggestion. We sit, the candle and I, in the midst of the shades we are +conquering, and sometimes look up from the lucent page to contemplate +the dark hosts of the enemy with a smile before they overwhelm us; as +they will, of course. Like me, the candle is mortal; it will burn out. + + * * * * * + +As the bed-book itself should be a sort of night-light, to assist its +illumination, coarse lamps are useless. They would douse the book. The +light for such a book must accord with it. It must be, like the book, a +limited, personal, mellow, and companionable glow; the solitary taper +beside the only worshipper in a sanctuary. That is why nothing can +compare with the intimacy of candle-light for a bed-book. It is a +living heart, bright and warm in central night, burning for us alone, +holding the gaunt and towering shadows at bay. There the monstrous +spectres stand in our midnight room, the advance guard of the darkness +of the world, held off by our valiant little glim, but ready to flood +instantly and founder us in original gloom. + +The wind moans without; ancient evils are at large and wandering in +torment. The rain shrieks across the window. For a moment, for just a +moment, the sentinel candle is shaken, and burns blue with terror. The +shadows leap out instantly. The little flame recovers, and merely looks +at its foe the darkness, and back to its own place goes the old enemy +of light and man. The candle for me, tiny, mortal, warm, and brave, a +golden lily on a silver stem! + +"Almost any book does for a bed-book," a woman once said to me. I +nearly replied in a hurry that almost any woman would do for a wife; +but that is not the way to bring people to conviction of sin. Her idea +was that the bed-book is a soporific, and for that reason she even +advocated the reading of political speeches. That would be a dissolute +act. Certainly you would go to sleep; but in what a frame of mind! You +would enter into sleep with your eyes shut. It would be like dying, not +only unshriven, but in the act of guilt. + +What book shall it shine upon? Think of Plato, or Dante, or Tolstoy, or +a Blue Book for such an occasion! I cannot. They will not do--they are +no good to me. I am not writing about you. I know those men I have +named are transcendent, the greater lights. But I am bound to confess +at times they bore me. Though their feet are clay and on earth, just as +ours, their stellar brows are sometimes dim in remote clouds. For my +part, they are too big for bedfellows. I cannot see myself, carrying my +feeble and restricted glim, following (in pyjamas) the statuesque +figure of the Florentine where it stalks, aloof in its garb of austere +pity, the sonorous deeps of Hades. Hades! Not for me; not after +midnight! Let those go who like it. + +As for the Russian, vast and disquieting, I refuse to leave all, +including the blankets and the pillow, to follow him into the gelid +tranquillity of the upper air, where even the colours are prismatic +spicules of ice, to brood upon the erratic orbit of the poor mud-ball +below called earth. I know it is my world also; but I cannot help that. +It is too late, after a busy day, and at that hour, to begin overtime +on fashioning a new and better planet out of cosmic dust. By +breakfast-time, nothing useful would have been accomplished. We should +all be where we were the night before. The job is far too long, once +the pillow is nicely set. + +For the truth is, there are times when we are too weary to remain +attentive and thankful under the improving eye, kindly but severe, of +the seers. There are times when we do not wish to be any better than we +are. We do not wish to be elevated and improved. At midnight, away with +such books! As for the literary pundits, the high priests of the Temple +of Letters, it is interesting and helpful occasionally for an acolyte +to swinge them a good hard one with an incense-burner, and cut and run, +for a change, to something outside the rubrics. Midnight is the time +when one can recall, with ribald delight, the names of all the Great +Works which every gentleman ought to have read, but which some of us +have not. For there is almost as much clotted nonsense written about +literature as there is about theology. + + * * * * * + +There are few books which go with midnight, solitude, and a candle. It +is much easier to say what does not please us then than what is exactly +right. The book must be, anyhow, something benedictory by a sinning +fellow-man. Cleverness would be repellent at such an hour. Cleverness, +anyhow, is the level of mediocrity today; we are all too infernally +clever. The first witty and perverse paradox blows out the candle. Only +the sick in mind crave cleverness, as a morbid body turns to drink. The +late candle throws its beams a great distance; and its rays make +transparent much that seemed massy and important. The mind at rest +beside that light, when the house is asleep, and the consequential +affairs of the urgent world have diminished to their right proportions +because we see them distantly from another and a more tranquil place in +the heavens where duty, honour, witty arguments, controversial logic on +great questions, appear such as will leave hardly a trace of fossil in +the indurated mud which presently will cover them--the mind then +certainly smiles at cleverness. + +For though at that hour the body may be dog-tired, the mind is white +and lucid, like that of a man from whom a fever has abated. It is bare +of illusions. It has a sharp focus, small and star-like, as a clear and +lonely flame left burning by the altar of a shrine from which all have +gone but one. A book which approaches that light in the privacy of that +place must come, as it were, with honest and open pages. + + * * * * * + +I like Heine then, though. His mockery of the grave and great, in those +sentences which are as brave as pennants in a breeze, is comfortable +and sedative. One's own secret and awkward convictions, never expressed +because not lawful and because it is hard to get words to bear them +lightly, seem then to be heard aloud in the mild, easy, and confident +diction of an immortal whose voice has the blitheness of one who has +watched, amused and irreverent, the high gods in eager and secret +debate on the best way to keep the gilt and trappings on the body of +the evil they have created. + +That first-rate explorer, Gulliver, is also fine in the light of the +intimate candle. Have you read lately again his Voyage to the +Houyhnhnms? Try it alone again in quiet. Swift knew all about our +contemporary troubles. He has got it all down. Why was he called a +misanthrope? Reading that last voyage of Gulliver in the select +intimacy of midnight I am forced to wonder, not at Swift's hatred of +mankind, not at his satire of his fellows, not at the strange and +terrible nature of this genius who thought that much of us, but how it +is that after such a wise and sorrowful revealing of the things we +insist on doing, and our reasons for doing them, and what happens after +we have done them, men do not change. It does seem impossible that +society could remain unaltered, after the surprise its appearance +should have caused it as it saw its face in that ruthless mirror. We +point instead to the fact that Swift lost his mind in the end. Well, +that is not a matter for surprise. + +Such books, and France's _Isle of Penguins_, are not disturbing as +bed-books. They resolve one's agitated and outraged soul, relieving it +with some free expression for the accusing and questioning thoughts +engendered by the day's affairs. But they do not rest immediately to +hand in the bookshelf by the bed. They depend on the kind of day one +has had. Sterne is closer. One would rather be transported as far as +possible from all the disturbances of earth's envelope of clouds, and +_Tristram Shandy_ is sure to be found in the sun. + +But best of all books for midnight are travel books. Once I was lost +every night for months with Doughty in the _Arabia Deserta_. He is a +craggy author. A long course of the ordinary facile stuff, such as one +gets in the Press every day, thinking it is English, sends one +thoughtless and headlong among the bitter herbs and stark boulders of +Doughty's burning and spacious expanse; only to get bewildered, and the +shins broken, and a great fatigue at first, in a strange land of fierce +sun, hunger, glittering spar, ancient plutonic rock, and very Adam +himself. But once you are acclimatized, and know the language--it takes +time--there is no more London after dark, till, a wanderer returned +from a forgotten land, you emerge from the interior of Arabia on the +Red Sea coast again, feeling as though you had lost touch with the +world you used to know. And if that doesn't mean good writing I know of +no other test. + +Because once there was a father whose habit it was to read with his +boys nightly some chapters of the Bible--and cordially they hated that +habit of his--I have that Book too; though I fear I have it for no +reason that he, the rigid old faithful, would be pleased to hear about. +He thought of the future when he read the Bible; I read it for the +past. The familiar names, the familiar rhythm of its words, its +wonderful well-remembered stories of things long past,--like that of +Esther, one of the best in English,--the eloquent anger of the prophets +for the people then who looked as though they were alive, but were +really dead at heart, all is solace and home to me. And now I think of +it, it is our home and solace that we want in a bed-book. + + + + +V. Transfiguration + + +There it is, thirty miles wide between the horns of the land, a bay +opening north-west upon the Atlantic, with a small island in the midst +of the expanse, a heap of sundered granite lying upon the horizon like +a faint sunken cloud, like the floating body of a whale, like an area +of opalescent haze, like an inexplicable brightness at sea when no +island can be seen. The apparition of that island depends upon the +favour of the sun. The island is only a ghost there, sometimes +invisible, sometimes but an alluring and immaterial fragment of the +coast we see far over the sea in dreams; a vision of sanctuary, of the +place we shall never reach, a frail mirage of land then, a roseous spot +which is not set in the sea, but floats there only while the thought of +a haven of peace and secure verities is still in the mind, and while +the longing eye projects it on the horizon. + +The sun sets behind the island. On a clear day, at sundown, the island +behaves so much like a lump of separated earth, a piece of the black +world we know, that I can believe it is land, something to be found on +the map, a place where I could get ashore, after toil and adventures. +At sundown a low yellow planet marks its hiding-place. + +If the island in the bay is usually but a coloured thought in the mind, +a phantom and an unattainable refuge by day, and a star by night, the +real coast which stretches seaward to it, marching on either hand into +the blue, confident and tall, is hardly more material, except by the +stones of my outlook. The near rocks are of indubitable earth. + +Beyond them the coloured fabric of the bay becomes diaphanous, and I +can but wonder at the permanence of such a coast in this wind, for in +it the delicate cliffs and the frail tinted fields inclined above them +seem to tremble, as though they would presently collapse and tear from +their places and stream inland as torn flimsies and gossamer. + +It is the sublimation of earth. Our own shining globe floats with the +others in a sea of light. Here in the bay on a September morning, if +our world till then had been without life and voice, with this shine +that is an impalpable dust of gold, the quickened air, and the seas +moving as though joyous in the first dawn, Eros and Aurora would have +known the moment, and a child would have been born. + +None but the transcendent and mounting qualities of our elements, and +the generative day which makes the surf dazzling, and draws the +passionate azure of the bugloss from hot and arid sand, and makes the +blobs of sea-jelly in the pools expand like flowers, and ripens the +clouds, nothing but the indestructible essence of life, life uplifted +and dominant, shows now in this world of the bay. + +Below the high moors which enclose the bay, those distant sleepy +uplands where the keels of the cumulus clouds are grounded, there are +saline meadows, lush and warm, where ditches serpentine between +barriers of meadowsweet, briers and fat grasses. Nearer to the sea the +levels are of moist sand covered with a close matting of thyme, and +herbage as close and resilient as moss, levels that are not green, like +fields, but golden, and of a texture that reflects the light, so that +these plains seem to have their own brightness. + +The sea plains finish in the sandhills. In this desert you may press a +hand into the body of earth, and feel its heat and pulse. The west wind +pours among the dunes, a warm and heavy torrent. There is no need to +make a miracle of the appearance of life on our earth. Life was at the +happy incidence of the potent elements on such a strand as this. +Aphrodite was no myth. Our mother here gave birth to her. + +The sea is kept from the dunes by a high ridge of blue water-worn +pebbles, and beyond the pebbles at low water is the wet strand over +which she came wading to give the earth children in her own likeness. +The Boy and Miss Muffet beside me are no surprise. They are proper to +the place. The salt water and the sand are still on their brown limbs, +and in the Boy's serious eyes and Miss Muffet's smile there is +something outside my knowledge; but I know that in the depth of that +mystery is security and content. + +There is a fear I have, though, when they trip it over the solid and +unquestionable stones, and leave the stones to fly off into the wind +down that shining entrance to the deep. For the strand has no +substance. Their feet move over a void in which far down I see another +sky than ours. They go where I doubt that I can follow. I cannot leave +my hold upon the rocks and enter the place to which their late and +aerial spirits are native. It is plain the earth is not a solid body. +As their bodies, moving over the bright vacuity, grow unsubstantial and +elfin with distance, and they approach that line where the surf +glimmers athwart the radiant void, I have a sudden fear that they may +vanish quite, and only their laughter come at me mockingly from the +near invisible air. They will have gone back to their own place. + + + + +VI. The Pit Mouth + + +There was Great Barr, idle, still, and quiet. Through the Birmingham +suburbs, out into the raw, bleak winter roads between the hedges, quite +beyond the big town smoking with its enterprising labours, one +approached the village of calamity with some awe and diffidence. You +felt you were intruding; that you were a mere gross interloper, coming +through curiosity, that was not excused by the compunction you felt, to +see the appearance of a place that had tragedy in nearly all its homes. +Young men streamed by on bicycles in the same direction, groups were +hurrying there on foot. + +The road rose in a mound to let the railway under, and beyond the far +dip was the village, an almost amorphous group of mean red dwellings +stuck on ragged fields about the dominant colliery buildings. Three +high, slim chimneys were leisurely pouring smoke from the grotesque +black skeleton structures above the pits. The road ran by the boundary, +and was packed with people, all gazing absorbed and quiet into the +grounds of the colliery; they were stacked up the hedge banks, and the +walls and trees were loaded with boys. + +A few empty motor-cars of the colliery directors stood about. A +carriage-horse champed its bit, and the still watchers turned at once +to that intrusive sound. Around us, a lucid winter landscape (for it +had been raining) ran to the distant encompassing hills which lifted +like low ramparts of cobalt and amethyst to a sky of luminous saffron +and ice-green, across which leaden clouds were moving. The country had +that hard, coldly radiant appearance which always impresses a sad man +as this world's frank expression of its alien disregard; this world not +his, on which he has happened, and must endure with his trouble for a +brief time. + +As I went through the press of people to the colliery gates, the women +in shawls turned to me, first with annoyance that their watching should +be disturbed, and then with some dull interest. My assured claim to +admittance probably made them think I was the bearer of new help +outside their little knowledge; and they willingly made room for me to +pass. I felt exactly like the interfering fraud I was. What would I not +have given then to be made, for a brief hour, a nameless +miracle-worker. + +In the colliery itself was the same seeming apathy. There was nothing +to show in that yard, black with soddened cinders and ash muck, where +the new red-brick engine-houses stood, that somewhere half a mile +beneath our feet were thirty men, their only exit to the outer world +barred by a subterranean fire. Nothing showed of the fire but a whitish +smoke from a ventilating shaft; and a stranger would not know what that +signified. But the women did. Wet with the rain showers, they had been +standing watching that smoke all night, and were watching it still, for +its unceasing pour to diminish. Constant and unrelenting, it streamed +steadily upward, as though it drew its volume from central fires that +would never cease. + +The doors of the office were thrown open, and three figures emerged. +They broke into the listlessness of that dreary place, where nothing +seemed to be going on, with a sudden real purpose, fast but unhurried, +and moved towards the shaft. Three Yorkshire rescue experts--one of +them to die later--with the Hamstead manager explaining the path they +should follow below with eager seriousness. "Figures of fun"! They had +muzzles on their mouths and noses, goggles on their eyes, fantastic +helms, and queer cylinders and bags slung about them. As they went up +the slope of wet ash, quick and full of purpose, their comical gear and +coarse dress became suddenly transfigured; and the silent crowd cheered +emotionally that little party of forlorn hope. + +They entered the cage, and down they went. Still it was difficult for +me to think that we were fronting tragedy, for no danger showed. An +hour and more passed in nervous and dismal waiting. There was a signal. +Some men ran to the pit-head carrying hot bricks and blankets. The +doctors took off their coats, and arranged bottles and tinkling +apparatus on chairs stuck in the mud. The air smelt of iodoform. A +cloth was laid on the ground from the shaft to the engine-house, and +stretchers were placed handy. The women, some carrying infants, broke +rank. That quickly up-running rope was bringing the first news. The +rope stopped running and the cage appeared. Only the rescue party came +out, one carrying a moribund cat. They knew nothing; and the +white-faced women, with hardly repressed hysteria, took again their +places by the engine-house. So we passed that day, watching the place +from which came nothing but disappointment. Occasionally a child, too +young to know it was adding to its mother's grief, would wail +querulously. There came a time when I and all there knew that to go +down that shaft was to meet with death. The increasing exhaustion and +pouring sweat of the returning rescue parties showed that. Yet the +miners who were not selected to go down were angry; they violently +abused the favouritism of the officials who would not let all risk +their lives. + +I have a new regard for my fellows since Great Barr. About you and me +there are men like that. There is nothing to distinguish them. They +show no signs of greatness. They have common talk. They have coarse +ways. They walk with an ugly lurch. Their eyes are not eager. They are +not polite. Their clothes are dirty. They live in cheap houses on cheap +food. They call you "sir." They are the great unwashed, the mutable +many, the common people. The common people! Greatness is as common as +that. There are not enough honours and decorations to go round. Talk of +the soldier! _Vale_ to Welsby of Normanton! He was a common miner. He +is dead. His fellows were in danger, their wives were white-faced and +their children were crying, and he buckled on his harness and went to +the assault with no more thought for self than great men have in a +great cause; and he is dead. I saw him go to his death. I wish I could +tell you of Welsby of Normanton. + +I left that place where the star-shine was showing the grim skeleton of +the shaft-work overhead in the night, and where men moved about below +in the indeterminate dark like dismal gnomes. There was a woman whose +cry, when Welsby died, was like a challenge. + +Next morning, in Great Barr, some blinds were down, the street was +empty. Children, who could see no reason about them why their fathers +should not return as usual, were playing foot-ball by the tiny church. +A group of women were still gazing at the grotesque ribs and legs of +the pit-head staging as though it were a monster without ruth. + +_November 1907._ + + + + +VII. Initiation + + +As to what the Boy will become, that is still with his stars; and +though once we thought he was much impressed by the dignity of the man +controlling a road roller, for it seemed it would be well to be that +slow herald in front with a little red flag, he has shown but the +faintest regard for the offices of policeman, engine-driver, and +soldier. It is clear there is but one good thing left for his choice, +and so the house is littered with drawings of ships. There has been +some advance from that early affair of black angles which, without +explanation, might have stood for anything, but was meant for a cutter. +Now, in a manner which a careless visitor could think was the hauteur +of an artist who is too sure of himself to care what you think of his +work, but is really acute shyness, he will present you at short notice +with a sketch in colours of a topsail schooner beating off a lee shore, +if your variety of beard does not rouse his suspicion. As art, such +paintings have their faults; but as delineations of that sort of ship +they have technical exactitude not common even in the studios. + +In fact, he has found an old manual of seamanship, and the +illustrations get more attention than some people give to Biblical +subjects. During vacant afternoons there is an uncanny calm in the +house, a silence which makes people think they have forgotten something +important; but it is only that the Boy is absent with the argonauts. He +is in tow of Argo, as it were, one of its heroes, surging astern in a +large easy-chair, viewing golden landfalls that are still under their +early spell in seas that ships have never sailed. There are no such +voyages in later life, none with quite that glamour, for we have tried +and know. Lucky Boy, sailing the greatest voyage of his life! +Occasionally, when a real ship is home again, and some one calls to see +if we still live there, the Boy is allowed to go to bed late, and there +he sits and fills his mind. + +"And what," said this deponent one evening, "about taking His Nibs with +me?" (There was some sea to be crossed.) Most certainly not! Well--! +still--! Would he be all right? But as he got to hear about this it was +hardly so certainly not as it seemed. There are times when he can +concentrate on a subject with awful pertinacity, though the occasions +are infrequent. This was one, however. He went. I knew he would +go--when he heard about it. + +A day came when we were at the railway station, and he was to cross the +sea for the first time. He was quite collected. His quiet eye +enumerated the baggage in one careless side-glance which detected there +was a strap undone and that a walking-stick was missing. In all that +crowded tumult converging on the stroke of the hour his seemed to be +the only apart and impassive face, and I began to think he was +indifferent; he merely looked at the cover of one magazine, and then +turned to the window and observed the world leaping past with the +detachment of a small immortal who was watching man's fleeting affairs. +Nothing to do with him. + +Once he caught my intent eye--for I thought he was a trifle pale--and +then he passed a radiant wink, and one of his dangling legs began to +swing as though that were the sole limb to be joyful. An hour later, +his face still to the glass, he was shaking with internal mirth. I +asked him to let me share it with him. "Did you see that old man at the +station when the train was starting?" he whispered. "He couldn't find +the carriage where his things were--he was running up and down without +a hat. Perhaps he was left behind." What do man's misfortune's matter +to the gods who live for ever? + + * * * * * + +Through sections of the quayside sheds he caught sight of near funnels, +businesslike with smoke, and a row of ports. It was then I had to tell +him there was plenty of time. "Two funnels," I heard him say in +surprise, and there is no doubt at that moment some of the importance +of the occasion was reflected on myself. That extra funnel told him, I +hope, I was doing this business in no meagre spirit. None of your +single-funnel ships for our affairs. At the quay end of the gangway he +stopped me, interrupting the whole concourse to do so. "Where's that +other bag?" he demanded severely. I was annoyed--like the people who +were following us--but I had to admire him all the same. At his age no +doubt it may be demanded that a ship be put about for a bag left +behind. When this childish egoism is maintained well into life, large +fortunes may be made. It is, perhaps, the only way. As soon as a man +can relate his personal affairs to those of the world, and understands +how unimportant he really is, from that moment he becomes a failure. +Some men never do it, and thus succeed. Therefore I allowed the Boy to +lead me aboard, and so secured a good berth at once, to the envy of +those who were unaided by a child. Already I was informed that, after +due inspection, the steamer had plenty of boats, "so it won't matter if +we sink." In five minutes we had discovered the companions to +everywhere on that ship, and were, I believe, the only passengers who +could find our way about her before she left port. + +But a glance seaward, and a word with an officer, gave me a thought or +two, and I broke off the Boy's interesting conversation with a fatherly +French quartermaster to take him where he could at least begin with +some food. "What a lark if there's a storm," laughed His Nibs, removing +a sandwich to say so. The fiddles were on the tables. We were off. + + * * * * * + +The ship gave a lurch, a ham leaped to the floor, some plates crashed, +and then the row of ports alongside us were darkened by the run of a +wave. The Boy made an exclamation partly stifled, and looked at me +quickly. I did not look at him, but went on with the food. He stopped +eating, and remained with his gaze fixed on the ports, gripping his +chair whenever they went dark. He said nothing about it, but he must +have been thinking pretty hard. "I suppose this is a strong ship, isn't +it?" he questioned once. + +As we were about to emerge into the open, the wet, deserted deck fell +away, and a grey wave which looked as aged as death, its white hair +streaming in the wind, suddenly reared over the ship's side, as though +looking for us, and then fled phantom-like, with dire cries. The Boy +shrank back for a moment, horrified, but then moved on. I think I heard +him sigh. It was no summer sea. The dark bales of rain were speeding up +from the south-west, low over waters which looked just what the sea +really is. + +I am glad he saw it like that. He hung on in a shelter with a +needlessly tight grip, and there was something of consternation in his +eye. But I enjoyed the cry of surprise he gave once when we were +getting used to it. A schooner passed us, quite close, a midget which +fairly danced over the running hills, lifting her bows and soaring +upwards, light as a bird, and settling in the hollows amid a white +cloud. "Isn't she brave!" said the Boy. + +_December 1910._ + + + + +VIII. The Art of Writing + + +Whether I placed the writing-pad on my knees in a great chair, or on +the table, or on the floor, nothing happened to it. I can only say that +that morning the paper was full of vile hairs, which the pen kept +getting into its mouth--enough to ruin the goodwill of any pen. Yet all +the circumstances of the room seemed luckily placed for work to flow +with ease; but there was some mysterious and inimical obstruction. The +fire was bright and lively, the familiar objects about the table +appeared to be in their right place. Again I examined the gods of the +table to be sure one had not by mischance broken the magic circle and +interrupted the current of favour for me. They were rightly +orientated--that comic pebble paper-weight Miss Muffet found on the +beach of a distant holiday, the chrysanthemums which were fresh from +that very autumn morning, stuck in the blue vase which must have got +its colour in the Gulf Stream; and the rusty machete blade from Peru, +and the earthenware monkey squatting meekly in his shadowy niche, +holding the time in his hands. The time was going on, too. + +I tried all the tricks I knew for getting under way, but the pen +continued to do nothing but draw idle faces and pick up hairs, which it +held firmly in its teeth. Then the second telegram was brought to me. +"What about Balkan article?" it asked, and finished with a studied +insult, after the manner of the editor-kind, whose assurance that the +function of the universe is only fulfilled when they have published the +fact makes them behave as would Jove with a thick-headed immortal. +"These Balkan atrocities will never cease," I said, dropping the +telegram into the fire. + +Had I possessed but one of those intelligent manuals which instruct the +innocent in the art, not only of writing, but of writing so well that a +very disappointed and world-weary editor rejoices when he sees the +manuscript, puts his thumbs up and calls for wine, I would have +consulted it. (I should be glad to hear if there is such a book, with a +potent remedy for just common dulness--the usual opaque, gummous, slow, +thick, or fat head.) As for me, I have nothing but a cheap dictionary, +and that I could not find. I raised my voice, calling down the hollow, +dusty, and unfurnished spaces of my mind, summoning my servants, my +carefully chosen but lazy and wilful staff of words, to my immediate +aid. But there was no answer; only the cobwebs moved there, though I +thought I heard a faint buzzing, which might have been a blow-fly. No +doubt my staff--small blame to them--were dreaming somewhere in the +sun, dispersed over several seas and continents. + +Well, a suburb of a big town, and such jobs as I find for them to do, +are grey enough for them in winter. I have no doubt some were nooning +it in Algiers, and others were prospecting the South Seas, flattering +themselves, with gross vanity, how well they could serve me there, if +only I would give them a chance with those coloured and lonely islands; +and others were in the cabins of ships far from any land, gossiping +about old times; and these last idle words, it is my experience, are +the most stubborn of the lot, usually ignoring all my efforts to get +them home again and to business. I could call and rage as I chose, or +entreat them, showing them the urgency of my need. But only a useless +and indefinite article came along, as he usually does, hours and hours +before the arrival of a lusty word which could throw about the +suggestions quicker than they may be picked up and examined. + +Very well. There was nothing for it but to fill another pipe, and dwell +with some dismay upon such things as, for instance, the way one's light +grows smoky with age. Is there a manual which will help a man to keep +his light shining brightly--supposing he has a light to keep? But if he +has but the cheapest of transient glims, good and bright enough for its +narrow purpose, is it any wonder it burns foul, seeing what business +usually it gets to illuminate in these exciting and hurried times. What +work! I think it would make rebels of the most quiet, unadventurous, +and simple-featured troop of words that ever a man gathered about him +for the plain domestic duties to employ them regularly, for example, in +sweeping up into neat columns such litter as the House of Commons +makes. It would numb the original heart of the bonniest set of words +that rightly used would have made some people happy--sterilize them, +make them anaemic and pasty-faced, so that they would disturb the peace +of mind of all compassionate men who looked upon them. That my own +staff of words refused my summons.... + +But what was it I said I wanted them for just now? I gazed round the +walls upon the portraits of the great writers of the past, hoping for +inspiration. Useless! Upon Emerson's face there was a faint smile of +most infuriating benevolence. Lamb--but I am getting tired of his +smirk, which might be of irony or kindness. He would look savage enough +today, hearing his constantly returning Dissertation on Roast Pig thump +the door-mat four times a week; for that, he can be assured, is the way +editors would treat it now, and without even preliminary consultations +with lady typist-secretaries. Of the whole gallery of the great I felt +there was not one worth his wall room. They are pious frauds. This +inspiration business is played out. I have never had the worth of the +frames out of those portraits.... Ah, the Balkans. That was it. And of +all the flat, interminable Arctic wastes of bleak wickedness and frozen +error that ever a shivering writer had to traverse.... + +My head was in my hands, and I was trying to get daylight and direction +into the affair with my eyes shut, when I felt a slight touch on my +arm. "I'm sorry we're in your way. Are you praying? Look who's here." + +I looked. It was Miss Muffet who spoke. She shook the gold out of her +eyes and regarded me steadily. Well she knew she had no right there, +for all her look of confident and tender solicitude. The Boy, who is a +little older (and already knows enough to place the responsibility for +intrusion on his sister with her innocent eyes and imperturbable calm +and golden hair), stood a little in the background, pretending to be +engrossed with a magnet, as though he were unaware that he was really +present. Curls hopped about on one leg frankly, knowing that the others +would be blamed for any naughtiness of hers. Her radiant impudence +never needs any apology. What a plague of inconsequential violators of +any necessary peace! When would my lucky words come now? + +The Boy probably saw a red light somewhere. "Haven't you finished uncle +we thought you had has a topsail schooner got two or three masts I saw +a fine little engine up in the town today and an aeroplane it was only +seventeen shillings do you think that is too much?" + +"I am learning the sailors' hornpipe at school," said Miss Muffet, +slowly and calmly; "you watch my feet. Do I dance it nicely?" + +I watched her feet. Now it is but fair to say that when Miss Muffet +dances across a room there is no international crisis in all this world +which would distract any man's frank admiration. When Miss Muffet steps +it on a sunny day, her hair being what it is, and her little feet in +her strap shoes being such as they are, then your mood dances in +accord, and your thoughts swing in light and rhythmic harmony. I got +up. And Curls, who is one of those who must mount stairs laboriously, +secure to the rails--she has black eyes only the bright light of which +is seen through her mane--she reached up for my hand, for she cannot +imitate her sister's hornpipe without holding on. + +Miss Muffet reached a corner of the room, and swung round, light as a +fairy, her hands on her hips, and said, "What do you think of that?" +Some of my lucky words instantly returned. I suppose it was more to +their mind. But I had nothing to give them to do. They could just stand +around and look on now, for when Curls seriously imitates her sister, +and then laughs heartily at her own absurd failure, because her feet +are irresponsible, that is the time when you have nothing to do, and +would not do anything if it had to be done.... + +What time it was the next interruption came--it was another telegram--I +don't know. Time had been obliterated. But then it began to flow again; +though not with a viscid and heavy measure. And when I took up my light +and ready pen, there, standing at eager attention, was all my staff, +waiting the call. What had happened to bring them all back? If the +writers of literary manuals will explain that secret to me, I should +acquire true wealth. + + + + +IX. A First Impression + + +Certainly it was an inconsiderate way of approaching the greatest city +of the Americas, but that was not my fault. I wished for the direct +approach, the figure of Liberty to rise, haughty and most calm, a noble +symbol, as we came in from overseas; then the wide portals; then New +York. But the erratic tracks of a tramp steamer go not as her voyagers +will. They have no control over her. She moves to an enigmatic will in +London. It happens, then, that she rarely shows a wonder of the world +any respect. She arrives like sudden rain, like wind from a new +quarter. She is as chance as the fall of a star. None knows the day nor +the hour. At the most inconvenient time she takes the wonder's visitors +to the back door. + +We went, light ship from the South, to Barbados, for orders; and +because I wanted New York, for that was the way home, we were sent to +Tampa for phosphates. As to Tampa, its position on the globe is known +only to underwriters and shipbrokers; it is that sort of place. It is a +mere name, like Fernando de Noronha, or Key West, which one meets only +in the shipping news, idly wondering then what strange things the +seafarer would find if he went. + +Late one night, down a main street of Tampa, there came, with the +deliberate movement of fate, a gigantic corridor train, looming as high +as a row of lighted villas, and drawn by the awful engine of a dream. +That train behaved there as trams do at home, presently stopping +alongside a footway. + +Behind me was a little wooden shop. In front was the wall of a +carriage, having an entrance on the second storey, and a roof athwart +the meridian stars. One of its wheels was the nearest and most dominant +object in the night to me, a monstrous bright round resting on a muddy +newspaper in the road. It absorbed all the light from the little wooden +shop. Now, I had hunted throughout Tampa for its railway terminus, +fruitlessly; but here its train had found me, keeping me from crossing +the road. + +"Where do I board this train for New York?" I asked. (I talked like a +fool, I know; it was like asking a casual wayfarer in East Ham whether +that by the kerb is the Moscow express. Yet what was I to do?) "Board +her right here," said the fellow, who was in his shirt sleeves. +Therefore I delivered myself, in blind faith, to the casual gods who +are apt to wake up and by a series of deft little miracles get things +done fitly in America when all seems lost and the traveller has even +bared his resigned neck to the stroke. + +But I had not the least hope of seeing New York and a Cunarder; not +with such an unpropitious start as that. With an exit like Euston one +never doubts sure direction, and arrival at the precise spot at the +exact moment. You feel there it was arranged for in Genesis. The +officials cannot alter affairs. They are priests administering +inviolate rites, advancing matters fore-ordained by the unseen, and so +no more able to stay or speed this cosmic concern than the astronomer +who schedules the planets. The planets take their heavenly courses. But +I had never been to the United States before, did not know even the +names of their many gods, and New York was at the end of a great +journey; and the train for it stopped outside a tobacco shop in the +road, like a common tram. + +There was another night when, with the usual unreason, the swift and +luxurious glide, lessening through easy gradations, ceased. I saw some +lights in the rain outside. How should I know it was New York? We had +even changed climates since we started. The passengers of my early days +in the train had passed away. There was nothing to show. More, I felt +no exultation--which should have been the first of warnings. Merely we +got to a railway station one night, and a negro insisted that I should +get out and stop out. This was N' Yark, he said. + +It was night, I repeat; there was a row of cabs in a dolorous rain. I +saw a man in a shiny cape under the nearest lamp, and beyond him a +vista of reflections from vacant stones, which to me always, more than +bleak hills or the empty round of the sea, is desolation. There were no +spacious portals. There was no figure of Liberty, haughty but +welcoming. There was rain, and cabs that waited without hope. There was +exactly what you find at the end of a twopenny journey when your only +luggage is an evening paper, an umbrella, and that tired feeling. Not +knowing where to go, and little caring, I followed the crowd, and so +found myself in a large well-lighted hall. Having no business there--it +was a barren place--I pushed on, and came suddenly to the rim of the +world. + +Before me was the immensity of dark celestial space in which wandered +hosts of uncharted stars; and below my feet was the abyss of old night. +Just behind me was a woman telling her husband that they had forgotten +Jimmy's boots, and couldn't go back now, for the ferry was just coming. + +Jimmy's boots! Now, when you are a released soul, ascending the night, +and the earth below is a bright silver ball, not so very big, and some +other viewless soul behind you, still with thoughts absent on worldly +trifles, mutters concerning boots when in the Milky Way, you will know +how I felt. Here was the ultimate empty dark in which the sun could +never shine. The sun had not merely left the place. It had never been +there. It was a remote star, one of myriads in the constellations at +large, the definite groups which occulted in the void before me. +Looking at those swiftly moving systems, I watched for the flash of +impact; but no great light of collision broke. The groups of lights +passed and repassed noiselessly. + +Then one constellation presently detached itself, and its orbit +evidently would intersect our foothold. It came nearer out of the +night, till I could see plainly that it appeared to be a long section +of a well-lighted street, say, like a length of Piccadilly. It +approached end-on to where I stood, and at last impinged. It actually +was a length of street, and I could continue my walk. The street +floated off again into the night, with me, Jimmy's father and mother, +and all of us, and the vans and motor-cars; and the other square end of +it soon joined a roadway on the opposite shore. The dark river was as +full of mobile lengths of bright roadway as Oxford Circus is of +motor-buses; and the fear of the unknown, as in the terrific dark of a +dream where flaming comets stream on undirected courses, numbed my +little mind. I had found New York. + +I had found it. Its bulk was beyond the mind, its lights were falling +star systems, and its movements those of general cataclysm. I should +find no care for little human needs there. One cannot warm one's hands +against the flames of earthquake. There is no provision for men in the +welter, but dimly apprehended in the night, of blind and inhuman +powers. + +Therefore, the hotel bedroom, when I got to it, surprised and steadied +me with its elaborate care for the body. But yet I was not certain. +Then I saw against the wall a dial, and reading a notice over it I +learned that by working the hands of this false clock correctly I could +procure anything, from an apple to the fire brigade. Now this was +carrying matters to the other extreme; and I had to suppress a desire +to laugh hysterically. I set the hands to a number; waited one minute; +then the door opened, and a waiter came in with a real tray, conveying +a glass and a bottle. So there was a method then in this general +madness after all. I tried to regard the wonder as indifferently as the +waiter's own cold and measuring eyes. + +_March 1910._ + + + + +X. The Derelict + + +In a tramp steamer, which was overloaded, and in midwinter, I had +crossed to America for the first time. What we experienced of the +western ocean during that passage gave me so much respect for it that +the prospect of the return journey, three thousand miles of those seas +between me and home, was already a dismal foreboding. The shipping +posters of New York, showing stately liners too lofty even to notice +the Atlantic, were arguments good enough for steerage passengers, who +do, I know, reckon a steamer's worth by the number of its funnels; but +the pictures did nothing to lessen my regard for that dark outer world +I knew. And having no experience of ships installed with racquet +courts, Parisian cafes, swimming baths, and pergolas, I was naturally +puzzled by the inconsequential behaviour of the first-class passengers +at the hotel. They were leaving by the liner which was to take me, and, +I gathered, were going to cross a bridge to England in the morning. Of +course, this might have been merely the innocent profanity of the +simple-minded. + +Embarking at the quay next day, I could not see that our ship had +either a beginning or an end. There was a blank wall which ran out of +sight to the right and left. How far it went, and what it enclosed, +were beyond me. Hundreds of us in a slow procession mounted stairs to +the upper floor of a warehouse, and from thence a bridge led us to a +door in the wall half-way in its height. No funnels could be seen. +Looking straight up from the embarkation gangway, along what seemed the +parapet of the wall was a row of far-off indistinguishable faces +peering straight down at us. There was no evidence that this building +we were entering, of which the high black wall was a part, was not an +important and permanent feature of the city. It was in keeping with the +magnitude of New York's skyscrapers, which this planet's occasionally +non-irritant skin permits to stand there to afford man an apparent +reason to be gratified with his own capacity and daring. + +But with the knowledge that this wall must be afloat there came no +sense of security when, going through that little opening in its +altitude, I found myself in a spacious decorated interior which hinted +nothing of a ship, for I was puzzled as to direction. My last ship +could be surveyed in two glances; she looked, and was, a comprehensible +ship, no more than a manageable handful for an able master. In that +ship you could see at once where you were and what to do. But in this +liner you could not see where you were, and would never know which way +to take unless you had a good memory. No understanding came to me in +that hall of a measured and shapely body, designed with a cunning +informed by ages of sea-lore to move buoyantly and surely among the +ranging seas, to balance delicately, a quick and sensitive being, to +every precarious slope, to recover a lost poise easily and with the +grace natural to a quick creature controlled by an alert mind. + +There was no shape at all to this structure. I could see no line the +run of which gave me warrant that it was comprised in the rondure of a +ship. The lines were all of straight corridors, which, for all I knew, +might have ended blindly on open space, as streets which traverse a +city and are bare in vacancy beyond the dwellings. It was possible we +were encompassed by walls, but only one wall was visible. There we +idled, all strangers, and to remain strangers, in a large hall roofed +by a dome of coloured glass. Quite properly, palms stood beneath. There +were offices and doors everywhere. On a broad staircase a multitude of +us wandered aimlessly up and down. Each side of the stairway were +electric lifts, intermittent and brilliant apparitions. I began to +understand why the saloon passengers thought nothing of the voyage. +They were encountering nothing unfamiliar. They had but come to another +hotel for a few days. + +I attempted to find my cabin, but failed. A uniformed guide took care +of me. But my cabin, curtained, upholstered, and warm, with mirrors and +plated ware, sunk somewhere deeply among carpeted and silent streets +down each of which the perspective of glow-lamps looked interminable, +left me still questioning. The long walk had given me a fear that I was +remote from important affairs which might be happening beyond. My +address was 323. The street door--I was down a side turning, +though--bore that number. A visitor could make no mistake, supposing he +could find the street and my side turning. That was it. There was a +very great deal in this place for everybody to remember, and most of us +were strangers. No doubt, however, we were afloat, if the lifebelts in +the rack meant anything. Yet the cabin, insulated from all noise, was +not soothing, but disturbing. I had been used to a ship in which you +could guess all that was happening even when in your bunk; a sensitive +and communicative ship. + +A steward appeared at my door, a stranger out of nowhere, and asked +whether I had seen a bag not mine in the cabin. He might have been +created merely to put that question, for I never saw him again on the +voyage. This liner was a large province having irregular and shifting +bounds, permitting incontinent entrance and disappearance. All this +should have inspired me with an idea of our vastness and importance, +but it did not. I felt I was one of a multitude included in a nebulous +mass too vague to hold together unless we were constantly wary. + +In the saloon there was the solid furniture of rare woods, the ornate +decorations, and the light and shadows making vague its limits and +giving it an appearance of immensity, to keep the mind from the thought +of our real circumstances. At dinner we had valentine music, dreamy +stuff to accord with the shaded lamps which displayed the tables in a +lower rosy light. It helped to extend the mysterious and romantic +shadows. The pale, disembodied masks of the waiters swam in the dusk +above the tinted light. I had for a companion a vivacious American lady +from the Middle West, and she looked round that prospect we had of an +expensive cafe, and said, "Well, but I am disappointed. Why, I've been +looking forward to seeing the ocean, you know. And it isn't here." + +"Smooth passage," remarked a man on the other side. "No sea at all +worth mentioning." Actually, I know there was a heavy beam sea running +before a half-gale. I could guess the officer in charge somewhere on +the exposed roof might have another mind about it; but it made no +difference to us in our circle of rosy intimate light bound by those +vague shadows which were alive with ready servitude. + +"And I've been reading _Captains Courageous_ with this voyage in view. +Isn't this the month when the forties roar? I want to hear them roar, +just once, you know, and as gently as any sucking dove." We all +laughed. "We can't even tell we're in a ship." + +She began to discuss Kipling's book. "There's some fine seas in that. +Have you read it? But I'd like to know where that ocean is he pretends +to have seen. I do believe the realists are no more reliable than the +romanticists. Here we are a thousand miles out, and none of us has seen +the sea yet. Tell me, does not a realist have to magnify his awful +billows just to get them into his reader's view?" + +I murmured something feeble and sociable. I saw then why sailors never +talk directly of the sea. I, for instance, could not find my key at +that moment--it was in another pocket somewhere--so I had no iron to +touch. Talking largely of the sea is something like the knowing talk of +young men about women; and what is a simple sailor man that he should +open his mouth on mysteries? + +Only on the liner's boat-deck, where you could watch her four funnels +against the sky, could you see to what extent the liner was rolling. +The arc seemed to be considerable then, but slowly described. But the +roll made little difference to the promenaders below. Sometimes they +walked a short distance on the edges of their boots, leaning over as +they did so, and swerving from the straight, as though they had turned +giddy. The shadows formed by the weak sunlight moved slowly out of +ambush across the white deck, but often moved indecisively, as though +uncertain of a need to go; and then slowly went into hiding again. The +sea whirling and leaping past was far below our wall side. It was like +peering dizzily over a precipice when watching those green and white +cataracts. + +The passengers, wrapped and comfortable on the lee deck, chatted as +blithely as at a garden-party, while the band played medleys of +national airs to suit our varied complexions. The stewards came round +with loaded trays. A diminutive and wrinkled dame in costly furs +frowned through her golden spectacles at her book, while her maid sat +attentively by. An American actress was the centre of an eager group of +grinning young men; she was unseen, but her voice was distinct. The two +Vanderbilts took their brisk constitutional among us as though the +liner had but two real passengers though many invisible nobodies. The +children, who had not ceased laughing and playing since we left New +York, waited for the slope of the deck to reach its greatest, and then +ran down towards the bulwarks precipitously. The children, happy and +innocent, completed for us the feeling of comfortable indifference and +security which we found when we saw there was more ship than ocean. The +liner's deck canted slowly to leeward, went over more and more, beyond +what it had done yet, and a pretty little girl with dark curls riotous +from under her red tam-o'-shanter, ran down, and brought up against us +violently with both hands, laughing heartily. We laughed too. Looking +seawards, I saw receding the broad green hill, snow-capped, which had +lifted us and let us down. The sea was getting up. + +Near sunset, when the billows were mounting express along our run, +sometimes to leap and snatch at our upper structure, and were rocking +us with some ease, there was a commotion forward. Books and shawls went +anywhere as the passengers ran. Something strange was to be seen upon +the waters. + +It looked like a big log out there ahead, over the starboard bow. It +was not easy to make out. The light was failing. We overhauled it +rapidly, and it began to shape as a ship's boat. "Oh, it's gone," +exclaimed some one then. But the forlorn object lifted high again, and +sank once more. Whenever it was glimpsed it was set in a patch of foam. + +That flotsam, whatever it was, was of man. As we watched it intently, +and before it was quite plain, we knew intuitively that hope was not +there, that we were watching something past its doom. It drew abeam, +and we saw what it was, a derelict sailing ship, mastless and awash. +The alien wilderness was around us now, and we saw a sky that was +overcast and driven, and seas that were uplifted, which had grown +incredibly huge, swift, and perilous, and they had colder and more +sombre hues. + +The derelict was a schooner, a lifeless and soddened hulk, so heavy and +uncontesting that its foundering seemed at hand. The waters poured back +and forth at her waist, as though holding her body captive for the +assaults of the active seas which came over her broken bulwarks, and +plunged ruthlessly about. There was something ironic in the +indifference of her defenceless body to these unending attacks. It +mocked this white and raging post-mortem brutality, and gave her a +dignity that was cold and superior to all the eternal powers could now +do. She pitched helplessly head first into a hollow, and a door flew +open under the break of her poop; it surprised and shocked us, for the +dead might have signed to us then. She went astern of us fast, and a +great comber ran at her, as if it had but just spied her, and thought +she was escaping. There was a high white flash, and a concussion we +heard. She had gone. But she appeared again far away, on a summit in +desolation, black against the sunset. The stump of her bowsprit, the +accusatory finger of the dead, pointed at the sky. + +I turned, and there beside me was the lady who had wanted to find the +sea. She was gazing at the place where the wreck was last seen, her +eyes fixed, her mouth a little open in awe and horror. + +_April 1910._ + + + + +XI. The Voyage of the _Mona_ + + +There was the _Mona_, Yeo's boat, below the quay wall; but I could not +see her owner. The unequal stones of that wall have the weathered +appearance of a natural outcrop of rock, for they were matured by the +traffic of ships when America was a new yarn among sailors. They are +the very stones one would choose to hear speak. Yet the light of early +morning in that spacious estuary was so young and tenuous that you +could suppose this heavy planet had not yet known the stains of night +and evil; and the _Mona_, it must be remembered, is white without and +egg-blue within. Such were the reflections she made, lively at anchor +on the swirls of a flood-tide bright enough for the sea-bottom to have +been luminous, that I felt I must find Yeo. The white houses of the +village, with shining faces, were looking out to sea. + +Another man, a visitor from the cities of the plains, was gazing down +with appreciation at the _Mona_. There was that to his credit. His +young wife, slight and sad, and in the dress of the promenade of a +London park, was with him. She was not looking on the quickness of the +lucent tide, but at the end of a parasol, which was idly marking the +grits. I had seen the couple about the village for a week. He was big, +ruddy, middle-aged, and lusty. His neck ran straight up into his round +head, and its stiff prickles glittered like short ends of brass wire. +It was easy to guess of him, without knowing him and therefore +unfairly, that, if his wife actually confessed to him that she loved +another man, he would not have believed her; because how was it +possible for her to do that, he being what he was? His aggressive face, +and his air of confident possession, the unconscious immodesty of the +man because of his important success at some unimportant thing or +other, seemed an offence in the ancient tranquillity of that place, +where poor men acknowledged only the sea, the sun, and the winds. + +I found Yeo at the end of the quay, where round the corner to seaward +open out the dunes of the opposite shore of the estuary, faint with +distance and their own pallor, and ending in the slender stalk of a +lighthouse, always quivering at the vastness of what confronts it. Yeo +was sitting on a bollard, rubbing tobacco between his palms. I told him +this was the sort of morning to get the _Mona_ out. He carefully poured +the grains into the bowl of his pipe, stoppered it, glanced slowly +about the brightness of the river mouth, and shook his head. This was a +great surprise, and anybody who did not know Yeo would have questioned +him. But it was certain he knew his business. There is not a more +deceptive and difficult stretch of coast round these islands, and Yeo +was born to it. He stood up, and his long black hair stirred in the +breeze under the broad brim of a grey hat he insists on wearing. The +soft hat and his lank hair make him womanish in profile, in spite of a +body to which a blue jersey does full justice, and the sea-boots; but +when he turns his face to you, with his light eyes and his dark and +leathery face, you feel he is strangely masculine and wise, and must be +addressed with care and not as most men. He rarely smiles when a +foolish word is spoken or when he is contradicted boldly by the +innocent. He spits at his feet and contemplates the sea, as though he +had heard nothing. + +The visitor came up, followed reluctantly by his wife. "Are you Yeo? +How are you, Yeo? What about a sail? I want you to take us round to +Pebblecombe." + +That village is over the bar and across the bay. Yeo looked at the man, +and shook his head. + +"Why not?" asked the visitor sharply, as though he were addressing the +reluctance of the driver of his own car. + +The sailor pointed a stern finger seawards, to where the bar is shown +in charts, but where all we could make out was the flashing of +inconstant white lines. + +"Well?" questioned the man, who glanced out there perfunctorily. "What +of it?" + +"Look at it," mildly insisted the sailor, speaking for the first time. +"Isn't the sea like a wall?" The man's wife, who was regarding Yeo's +placid face with melancholy attention, turned to her husband and placed +a hand of nervous deprecation on his arm. He did not look at her. + +"Oh, of course, if you don't want to go, if you don't want to go...." +said the visitor, shaking his head as though at rubbish, and rising +several times on his toes. "Perhaps you've a better job," he added, +with an unpleasant smile. + +"I'm ready to go if you are, sir," said Yeo, "but I shall have to take +my friend with me." The sailor nodded my way. + +The man did not look at me. I was not there to him. He gave an +impatient jerk to his head. "Ready to go? Of course I'm ready to go! Of +course. Why do you suppose I asked?" + +Yeo went indoors, came out with a bundle of tarpaulins for us, and +began moving with deliberation along to the _Mona_. Something was said +by the woman behind us, but so quietly I did not catch it. Her husband +made confident noises of amusement, and replied in French that it was +always the way with these local folk--always the way. The result, I +gathered, of a slow life, though that was hardly the way he put it. +Nothing in it, she could be sure. These difficulties were made to raise +the price. The morning was beautiful. Still, if she did not want to go +... if she did not want to go. And his tone was that perhaps she would +be as absurd as that. I heard no more, and both followed us. + +I got out to the _Mona_, cast off her stern mooring, got in the anchor, +and the pull on that brought us to the stone steps of the +landing-stage. While I made the seats ready for the voyagers and handed +them in, Yeo took two reefs in the lug-sail (an act which seemed, I +must say, with what wind we felt there, to be carrying his prescience +to bold lengths) and hauled the sail to its place. I went forward to +lower the centre keel as he came aft with the sheet in his hand. The +_Mona_ sidled away, stood out, and then reached for the distant +sandhills. The village diminished and concentrated under its hill. + +When clear of the shelter of the hill, on the lee foot of which the +village shelters from the westerly winds, the _Mona_ went over suddenly +in a gust which put her gunwale in the wash and kept it there. The +dipper came adrift and rattled over. Yeo eased her a bit, and his +uncanny eyes never shifted from their fixed scrutiny ahead. Our +passenger laughed aloud, for his wife had grasped him at the unexpected +movement and the noise. "That's nothing," he assured her. "This is +fine." + +We cleared the shallows and were in the channel where the weight of the +incoming tide raced and climbed. The _Mona's_ light bows, meeting the +tide, danced ecstatically, sending over us showers which caught in the +foot of the sail. The weather in the open was bright and hard, and the +sun lost a little of its warmth in the wind, which was north of west. +The dunes, which had been evanescent through distance in the wind and +light, grew material and great. The combers, breaking diagonally along +that forsaken beach, had something ominous to say of the bar. Even I +knew that, and turned to look ahead. Out there, across and above the +burnished sea, a regular series of long shadowy walls were forming. +They advanced slowly, grew darker, and grew higher; then in their +parapets appeared arcs of white, and at once, where those lines of +sombre shadows had been, there were plunging strata of white clouds. +Other dark bands advanced from seaward continuously. There was a tremor +and sound as of the shock and roll of far thunder. + +We went about again, steering for the first outward mark of the +fairway, the Mullet Buoy. Only the last house of the village was now +looking at us remotely, a tiny white cube which frequently sank, on its +precarious ledge of earth, beneath an intervening upheaval of the +waters. The sea was superior now, as we saw the world from our little +boat. The waters moved in from the outer with the ease of certain +conquest, and the foundering shores vanished under each uplifted send +of the ocean. We rounded the buoy. I could see the tide holding it down +aslant with heavy strands of water, stretched and taut. About we went +again for the lifeboat-house. + +There was no doubt of it now. We should be baling soon. Yeo, with one +brown paw on the sheet and the other on the tiller, had not moved, nor +even, so he looked, blinked the strange, unfrowning eyes peering from +under the brim of his hat. The _Mona_ came on an even keel by the +lifeboat-house, shook her wing for a moment as though in delight, and +was off again dancing for the Mid Buoy. She was a live, responsive, and +happy bird. "Now, Yeo," said the passenger beside the sailor, beaming +in proper enjoyment of this quick and radiant experience. "Didn't I +tell you so? What's the matter with this?" + +There was nothing the matter with that. The sea was blue and white. The +frail coast, now far away, was of green and gold. The sky was the +assurance of continued good. Our boat was buoyant energy. That bay, +when in its uplifted and sparkling mood, with the extent of its liberty +and the coloured promise of its romantic adventure, has no hint at all +of the startling suddenness of its shadow, that presage of its complex +and impersonal malice. + +Yeo turned the big features of his impassive face to his passenger, +looked at him as he would at a wilful and ill-mannered child, and said, +"In five minutes we shall be round the Mid Buoy. Better go back. If you +want to go back, say so now. Soon you won't be able to. We may be kept +out. If we are, don't blame me." + +"Oh, go on, you," the man said, smiling indulgently. He was not going +to relinquish the fine gift of this splendid time. + +Yeo put his pipe in his mouth and resumed his stare outwards. He said +no more. On we went, skimming over inflowing ridges with exhilarating +undulations, light as a sandpiper. It was really right to call that a +glorious morning. I heard the curlews fluting among the stones of the +Morte Bank, which must then have been almost awash; but I did not look +that way, for the nearing view of the big seas breaking ahead of us +fixed my mind with the first intentness of anxiety. Though near the top +of the flood, the fairway could not be made out. What from the distance +had appeared orderly ranks of surf had become a convulsive wilderness +of foam, piled and dazzling, the incontinent smother of a heavy ground +swell; for after all, though the wind needed watching, it was nothing +much. The _Mona_ danced on towards the anxious place. Except the +distant hills there was no shore. Our hills were of water now we neared +the bar. They appeared ahead with surprising suddenness, came straight +at us as though they had been looking for us, and the discovery made +them eager; and then, when the head of the living mass was looking over +our boat, it swung under us. + +We were beyond the bar before we knew it. There were a few minutes +when, on either hand of the _Mona_, but not near enough to be more than +an arresting spectacle, ponderous glassy billows ceaselessly arose, +projected wonderful curves of translucent parapets which threw shadows +ahead of their deliberate advance, lost their delicate poise, and +became plunging fields of blinding and hissing snow. We sped past them +and were at sea. Yeo's knowledge of his work gives him more than the +dexterity which overcomes difficulties as it meets them; it gives him +the prescience to avoid them. + +The steady breeze carried away from us the noise of that great tumult +on the bar, and here was a sunny quietude where we heard nothing but +the wing of the _Mona_ when it fluttered. The last of the land was the +Bar Buoy, weltering and tolling erratically its melancholy bell in its +huge red cage. That dropped astern. The _Mona_, as though she had been +exuberant with joy at the promise of release, had come out with whoops +and a fuss, but, being outside, settled down to enjoy liberty in quiet +content. The little lady with us, for the first time, appeared not +sorry to be there. The boat was dry. The scoured thwarts were even hot +to the touch. Our lady held the brim of her big straw hat, looking out +over the slow rhythm of the heavy but unbroken seas, the deep +suspirations of the ocean, and there was even a smile on her delicate +face. She crouched forward no longer, and did not show that timid +hesitation between her fear of sudden ugly water, when she would have +inclined to her husband's side, and her evident nervousness also of her +mate. She sat erect, enjoying the slow uplift and descent of the boat +with a responsive body. She gazed over-side into the transparent deeps, +where large jellyfish were shining like sunken moons. I got out my +pipe. This suggested something to our other passenger, and he got out +his. He fumbled out his pouch and filled up. He then regarded the +loaded pipe thoughtfully, but presently put it away, and leaned +forward, gazing at the bottom of the boat. I caught Yeo's eye in a very +solemn wink. + +The _Mona_, lost in the waste, coursed without apparent purpose. +Sometimes for a drowsy while we headed into the great light shining +from all the Atlantic which stretched before us to America; and again +we turned to the coast, which was low and far beyond mounting seas. By +watching one mark ashore, a grey blur which was really the tower of a +familiar village church, it was clear Yeo was not making Pebblecombe +with any ease. I glanced at him, and he shook his head. He then nodded +it towards the western headland of the bay. + +That was almost veiled by a dark curtain, though not long before the +partitioned fields and colours of its upper slopes were clear as a +mosaic; so insidiously, to the uninitiated, do the moods of this bay +change. Our lady was at this moment bending solicitously towards her +husband, whose head was in his hands. But he shook her off, turning +away with a face not quite so proud as it had been, for its complexion +had become that of a green canary's. He had acquired an expression of +holiness, contemplative and sorrowful. The western coast had +disappeared in the murk. "Better have something to eat now," said Yeo, +"while there's a chance." + +The lady, after a hesitating glance at her husband, who made no sign, +his face being hidden in his arms, got out the luncheon-basket. He +looked up once with a face full of misery and reproach, and said, +forgetting the past with boldness, "Don't you think we'd better be +getting back? It's looking very dark over there." + +Yeo munched with calm for a while, swallowed, and then remarked, while +conning the headland, "It'll be darker yet, and then we shan't go back, +because we can't." + +The _Mona_ continuously soared upwards on the hills and sank again, +often trembling now, for the impact of the seas was sharper. The man +got into the bottom of the boat and groaned. + +Light clouds, the feathery growth of the threatening obscurity which +had hidden the western land, first spread to dim the light of the sun, +then grew thick and dark overhead too, leaving us, after one ray that +sought us out again and at once died, in a chill gloom. The glassy seas +at once became opaque and bleak. Their surface was roughened with +gusts. The delicate colours of the world, its hopeful spaciousness, its +dancing light, the high blue vault, abruptly changed to the dim, cold, +restricted outlook of age. We waited. + +As Yeo luffed the squall fell on us bodily with a great weight of wind +and white rain, pressing us into the sea. The _Mona_ made ineffective +leaps, trying to get release from her imprisonment, but only succeeded +in pouring water over the inert figure lying on the bottom boards. In a +spasm of fear he sprang up and began to scramble wildly towards his +wife, who in her nervousness was gripping the gunwale, but was facing +the affair silently and pluckily. "Keep still there!" peremptorily +ordered the sailor; and the man bundled down without a word, like a +dog, an abject heap of wet rags. + +The first weight of the squall was released. The _Mona_ eased. But the +rain set in with steadiness and definition. Nothing was in sight but +the waves shaping in the murk and passing us, and the blurred outline +of a ketch labouring under reduced canvas to leeward. The bundle on the +boat's floor sat up painfully and glanced over the gunwale. He made no +attempt to disguise his complete defeat by our circumstances. He saw +the ketch, saw she was bigger, and humbly and loudly implored Yeo to +put him aboard. He did not look at his wife. His misery was in full +possession of him. When near to the ketch we saw something was wrong +with a flag she was flying. We got round to her lee quarter and hailed +the three muffled figures on her deck. + +"Can we come aboard?" roared Yeo. + +One of the figures came to the ship's side and leaned over. "All +right," we heard, "if you don't mind sailing with a corpse." + +Yeo put it to his passengers. The woman said nothing. Her pale face, +pitifully tiny and appealing within a sailor's tarpaulin hat, showed an +innocent mind startled by the brutality of a world she did not know, +but a mind controlled and alert. You could guess she expected nothing +now but the worst, and had been schooling herself to face it. Her +husband, when he knew what was on that ship, repudiated the vessel with +horror. Yet we had no sooner fallen slightly away than he looked up +again, was reminded once more that she stood so much higher than our +boat, and cried, "Yes, yes!" + +The two craft imperceptibly approached, as by gravitation. The men of +the ketch saw we had changed our minds, and made ready to receive us. +On one noisy uplift of a wave we got the lady inboard. Waiting another +opportunity, floundering about below the black wall of the ship, +presently it came, and we shoved over just anyhow the helpless bulk of +the man. He disappeared within the ship like a shapeless sack, and +bumped like one. When I got over, I saw the _Mona's_ mast, which was +thrusting and falling by the side of the ketch, making wild +oscillations and eccentrics, suddenly vanish; and then appeared Yeo, +who carried a tow-line aft and made fast. + +The skipper of the ketch had been drowned, we were told. They were +bringing his body home. The helmsman indicated a form lashed in a +sail-cloth to the hatch. They were standing on and off, waiting to get +it over the bar. Yeo they knew so well that hardly any words passed +between them. They were glad to put the piloting in his hands. He took +the wheel of the _Judy of Padstow_. + +The substantial deck of the _Judy_ was a great relief after the dizzy +gyrations of the aerial _Mona_; and our lady, with a half-glance at +what on the hatch was so grimly indifferent to all that could happen +now, even smiled again, perhaps with a new sense of safety. She saw her +husband settled in a place not too wet, and got about the venerable +boards of the _Judy_, looking at the old gear with curiosity, glancing, +with her head dropped back, into the dark intricacy of rigging upheld +by the ponderous mainmast as it swayed back and forth. Every time the +men went hurriedly trampling to some point of the running gear she +watched what they were at. For hours we beat about, in a great noise of +waters, waiting for that opportunity at the entrance to home and +comfort. Once Yeo took us as far towards the vague mist of surf as the +dismal tolling of the Bar Buoy, but evidently did not like the look of +it, and stood out again. + +At last, having decided, he shouted orders, there was a burst of +activity, and we headed for the bad place. Soon we should know. + +The _Judy_ began to plunge alarmingly. The incoming rollers at times +swept her along with a rush, and Yeo had his hands full. Her bowsprit +yawned, rose and fell hurriedly, the _Judy's_ unsteady dexter pointing +in nervous excitement at what was ahead of her. But Yeo held her to it, +though those heavy following seas so demoralized the _Judy_ that it was +clear it was all Yeo could do to keep her to her course. Columns of +spray exploded ahead, driving in on us like shot. + +"Look out!" cried Yeo. I looked. Astern was a grey hill, high over us, +fast overtaking us, the white turmoil of its summit already streaming +down its long slope. It accelerated, as if it could see it would soon +be too late. It nearly was, but not quite. A cataract roared over the +poop, and Yeo vanished. The _Judy_, in a panic, made an attempt at a +move which would have been fatal then; but she was checked and her head +steadied. I could do nothing but hold the lady firm and grasp a pin in +its rail. The flood swept us, brawling round the gear, foundering the +hatch. For a moment I thought it was a case, and saw nothing but +maniacal water. Then the foam subsided to clear torrents which flung +about violently with the ship's movement. The men were in the rigging. +Yeo was rigid at the wheel, his eyes on the future. I could not see the +other passenger till his wife screamed, and then I saw him. Two figures +rolled in a flood that was pouring to the canting of the deck, and one +of them desperately clutched at the other for aid. But the other was +the dead skipper, washed from his place on the hatch. + +We were over the bar again, and the deck became level. But it remained +the bottom of a shallow well in which floated with indifference the +one-time master of the _Judy_, face downwards, and who presently +stranded amidships. Our passenger reclined on the vacated hatch, his +eyes wide with childish and unspoken terror, and fixed on his wife, +whose ministering hands he fumbled for as does a child for his mother's +when he wakes at night after a dream of evil. + + + + +XII. The Lascar's Walking-Stick + + +The big face of Limehouse Church clock stared through the window at us. +It is rather a senseless face, because it is so full of cracks that you +can find any hour in it you do not want, especially when in a hurry. +But nobody with a life that had not wide areas of waste leisure in it +would ever visit Hammond now, where he lives in a tenement building, in +a room which overlooks the roofs and railway arches of Limehouse. Just +outside his window the tower of the church is rather too large and too +close. + +Hammond has rooms in the tenement which are above the rest of the +street. He surmounts many layers of dense humanity. The house is not +the usual model dwelling. Once it knew better days. Once it was the +residence of a shipowner, in the days when the London docks were full +of clippers, and shipowners husbanded their own ships and liked to live +near their work. The house has a broad and noble staircase, having a +carved handrail as wide as a span; but much of the old and carved +interior woodwork of the house is missing--firewood sometimes runs +short there--and the rest is buried under years of paint and dirt. + +Hammond never knows how many people share the house with him. "I've +tried to find out, but the next day one of 'em has died and two more +are born." It is such a hive that most of Hammond's friends gave up +visiting him after discovering in what place he had secluded himself; +but there he stays with his books and his camera, his pubs and his +lightermen, Jews, Chinamen, sailors, and dock-labourers. Occasionally a +missionary from the studios of Hempstead or Chelsea goes down to sort +out Hammond from his surroundings, and to look him over for damage, +when found. + +"Did I ever tell you about Jabberjee?" Hammond asked me that afternoon. + +No, he hadn't. Some of Hammond's work, which he had been showing me, +was scattered over the floor, and he stepped among the litter and came +and looked through the window with me. "A funny thing happened to me +here," he said, "the other evening. A pal of mine died. The bills which +advertise for the recovery of his body--you can see 'em in any pub +about here--call him Joseph Cherry, commonly called Ginger. He was a +lighterman, you know. There was a sing-song for the benefit of his wife +and kids round at the George and Dragon, and I was going. + +"On my way I stopped to look in at my favourite pawnshop. Do you know +the country about here? Well, you have to mind your eye. You never know +what will turn up. I never knew such a place. Not all of Limehouse gets +into the Directory, not by a lot. It is bound on the east by China, on +the north by Greenland, on the south by Cape Horn, and on the west by +London Bridge. + +"The main road near here is the foreshore of London. There's no doubt +the sea beats on it--unless you are only a Chelsea chap, with your eyes +bunged up with paint. All sorts of things drift along. All sorts of +wreckage. It's like finding a cocoanut or a palm hole stranded in a +Cornish cove. The stories I hear--one of you writer fellers ought to +come and stay here, only I suppose you are too busy writing about +things that really matter. You are like the bright youths in the art +schools, drawing plaster casts till they don't know life when they see +it. + +"Well, about this pawnshop. It's a sort of pocket--you know those +places on the beach where a lot of flotsam strands--oceanic +treasure-trove. I suppose the currents, for some reason sailors could +explain, eddy round this pawnshop and leave things there. That pawnshop +is the luckiest corner along our beach, and I stopped to turn over the +sea litter. + +"Of course, there was a lot of chronometers, and on top of a pile of +'em was a carved cocoanut. South Sea Islands, I suppose. Full of +curious involuted lines--a mist of lines--with a face peering through +the mist, if you looked close enough. Rows of cheap watches hung on +their chains, and there was a lot of second-hand meerschaum pipes, and +a walrus tusk, carved about a little. What took my eye was an old +Chinese bowl, because inside it was a little jade idol--a fearful +little wretch, with mother-o'-pearl eyes. It would squat in your +thoughts like a toad, that idol--eh, where does Jabberjee come in? +Well, here he comes. + +"I didn't know he was coming at all, you understand. I shouldn't have +jumped more if the idol had winked at me. + +"There stood Jabberjee. I didn't know that was his name, though. He was +christened Jabberjee after the trouble, by a learned Limehouse +schoolboy, who wore spectacles. Do I make myself clear?" + +I murmured that I was a little dense, but time might carry out +improvements. Hammond was talking on, though, without looking at me. +"There the Lascar was. Lots of 'em about here, you know. He was the +usual bundle of bones and blue cotton rags, and his gunny bags flapped +on his stick legs like banners. He looked as uncertain as a +candle-flame in a draught. Perhaps he was sixteen. I dunno. Maybe he +was sixty. You can't tell these Johnnies. He had a shaven cranium, and +his tight scalp might have been slipped over the bony bosses of his +head with a shoehorn. + +"I don't know what he was saying. He cringed, and said something very +quickly; I thought he was speaking of something he had concealed on his +person. Smuggled goods, likely. Tobacco. + +"Looking over his shoulder, wishing he would go away, I saw a policeman +in the dusk at the opposite corner, with his eye on us. + +"Then I could see something was concealed under the Lascar's flimsies. +He seemed trying to keep it quiet. He kept on talking, and I couldn't +make out what he was driving at. I was looking at his clothes, +wondering what the deuce he had concealed there. At last something came +out of his rags. Talk about making you jump! It really did look like +the head of a snake. It was, too, but attached to a walking-stick--sort +of handle. A scaly head it was, in some shiny material. Its eyes were +like a pair of rubies. They picked up the light somehow, and glittered. + +"Now listen. I looked up then into the Lascar's face. I was surprised +to find he was taller. Much taller. He put his face forward and down, +so that I wanted to step back. + +"He had an ugly look. He was smiling; the sweep was smiling, as though +he knew he was a lot cleverer than I. Another thing. The place was +suddenly quiet, and the houses and shops seemed to have fallen far +back. The pavement was wider. + +"There was something else, I noticed. The bobby had left the street +corner, and was walking our way. The curious thing was, though, the +more he walked the farther off he got, as though the road was being +stretched under his feet. + +"Mind you, I was still awake and critical. You know there is a +substratum of your mind which is critical, when you are dreaming, +standing looking on outside you, like a spectator. + +"Then the stick touched my hand. I shouted. I must have yelled jolly +loud, I think. I couldn't help it. That horrible thing seemed to +wriggle in my fingers. + +"It was the shout which brought the crowd. There was the policeman. I +can't make out how he got there. 'Now, what's your little game?' he +said. That brought the buildings up with a rush, and broke the road +into the usual clatter. + +"It was all quite simple. There was nothing in it then out of the +ordinary. Just a usual Lascar, very frightened, waving a cheap cane +with a handle like a snake's head. Then another policeman came up in a +hurry, and pushed through the crowd. The crowd was on my side, maudlin +and sympathetic. They knew all about it. The coolie had tried to stab +me. An eager young lady in an apron asked a boy in front--he had just +forced through--what was the matter. He knew all about it. + +"'The Indian tried to bite the copper.' + +"'Tried to bite him?' + +"'Not 'arf he didn't.' + +"The Hindoo was now nearly hysterical, and the kiddies were picking up +his language fast. 'Now then, old Jabberjee,' said one nipper in +spectacles. The crowd was laughing, and surging towards the police. I +managed to edge out of it. + +"'What's the trouble?' I asked a carman. + +"'You see that P. and O. Johnny?' he said. 'Well, he knocked down that +kid'--indicating the boy in spectacles--'and took tuppence from him.' + +"I thought a lot about the whole thing on the way home," said Hammond. +"I tell you the yarn for you to explain to the chaps who like to base +their beliefs on the sure ground of what they can understand." + + + + +XIII. The Extra Hand + + +Old George Galsworthy and I sat on the headland above the estuary, +looking into the vacancy which was the Atlantic on an entranced silver +evening. The sky was overcast. There was no wind, and no direct sun. +The light was refined and diffused through a thin veiling of pearl. Sea +and sky were one. As though they were suspended in space we saw a tug, +having a barque in tow, far but distinct, in the light of the bay, tiny +models of ebony set in a vast brightness. They were poised in the +illumination, and seemed to be motionless, but we knew they were moving +down on us. "Here she comes," said the seaman, "and a fine evening it +is for the end of her last voyage." Shipbreakers had bought that +barque. She was coming in to be destroyed. + +The stillness of the world, and its lustre in which that fine black +shape was centred and was moving to her end, made me feel that +headlands, sea, and sky knew what was known to the two watchers on the +hill. She was condemned. The ship was central, and the regarding world +stood about her in silence. Sombre and stately she came, in the manner +of the tragic proud, superior to the compelling fussiness of little +men, making no resistance. The spring tide was near full. It had +flooded the marsh lands below us, but not with water, for those +irregular pools resplendent as mirrors were deeps of light. The +hedgerows were strips of the earth's rind remaining above a profound. +The light below the lines of black hedges was antipodean. The barque +moved in slowly. She did not go past the lighthouse, and past our hill, +into the harbour beyond, like a ship about the business of her life. +She turned into the shallows below us, and stood towards the foot of +the hill. + +"She's altered a little," meditated Galsworthy. "They've shortened her +sticks, those Norwegians, and painted her their beastly mustard colour +and white. She's hogbacked, too. Well, she's old." The old man +continued his quiet meditation. He was really talking to himself, I +think, and I was listening to his thoughts. + +"Look!" cried Galsworthy, suddenly rising, his hand gripping my +shoulder. The tug had cast off and was going about. The ship came right +on. There was an interval of time between her and the shore which was +breathless and prolonged. + +"She's aground!" exclaimed the old man to himself, and the hand on my +shoulder gripped harder. He stood regarding her for some time. "She's +done," he said, and presently released me, sitting down beside me +again, still looking at her moodily, smoking his pipe. He was silent +for a time. Perhaps he had in his mind that he too had taken the +ground. It was sunset, and there she was, and there was he, and no more +sparkling morning tides out of port for them any more. + +Presently he turned to me. "There's a queer story about her. She +carried an extra hand. I'll tell you. It's a queer yarn. She had one +man at a muster more than signed for her. At night, you couldn't get +into the rigging ahead of that chap. There you'd find him just too much +ahead of the first lad who had jumped at the call to be properly seen, +you know. You could see him, but you couldn't make him out. So the chap +behind him was in no hurry, after the first rush. Well, it made it +pretty hard for her old man to round up a crew. He had to find men who +didn't know her. Men in Poplar who didn't know her, those days, were +scarce. She was a London clipper and she carried a famous flag. +Everybody knew her but men who weren't sailors. + +"Well, the boys said she had a bit of gibbet-post about her somewhere. +Ah! maybe. I don't know. Anyway, I say she was a fine clipper. I knew +her. She was the pick of the bunch, to my eye. But she was full of +trouble. I must say that. When she was launched she killed a man. First +she stuck on the ways, and then she went off all unexpected, like a +bird. That was always a trick of hers. You never knew her. And when she +was tired of headwinds, she'd find a dead calm. That was the kind of +ship she was. A skipper would look at her, and swear she was the ship +for him. The other chaps didn't understand her, he'd say. A ship like +that's sure to be good, he'd tell you. But when he'd got her she'd turn +his hair grey. She was that sort. + +"One voyage she was six weeks beating to westward round Cape Horn. We +had a bad time. I'd never seen such seas. We could do no good there. It +was a voyage and a half. She lost the second mate overboard, and she +lost gear. So the old man put back to the Plate. And, of course, all +her crowd deserted, to a man. They said they wanted to see their homes +again before they died. They said there was something wrong about that +ship, and they left all their truck aboard, and made themselves scarce. +The old man scraped up a new crowd. They came aboard at dusk, one day, +and they stared about them. 'Look, sir,' said one of them, 'what's that +up there? What's that figgerhead in y'r main to'gallan' cross-tree?' I +was the mate, you know. I talked to that chap. He learned something +about getting the booze out of him before he came aboard. He got a move +on. + +"We were over four months making 'Frisco that voyage, and she the +sailer she was. Why, she's logged thirteen knots. But she could get +nothing right, not for long. She was like those fine-looking women men +can't live without, and can't live with. She'd break a man's heart. +When we got back to Blackwall we heard she was sold to foreigners ... +but there she is now, come home to die. I bet old Yeo don't care much +about her troubles, though. He'll break her up, troubles and all, and +she's for firewood ... there you are, my dear, there you are ... but +you should have seen her at Blackwall, in the old days ... what's the +East India Dock Road like, these times?" + +The next day, at low water, I stood beneath her, and watched a cascade +pouring incessantly from a patched wound in her side, for she had been +in collision, and that was why she was condemned. She was careened, +like a slain thing, and with the dank rocks and weeds about, and that +monotonous pour from her wound, she might have been a venerable sea +monster from which the life was draining. Yeo hailed me from above, and +up the lively rope ladder I went. She had a Norwegian name, but that +was not her name. All Poplar knew her once. There she was born. She was +one of ours. That stone arch of John Company, the entrance to the East +India Dock, once framed her picture, and her topmasts looked down to +the Dock Road, when she was at home. I could believe Galsworthy. She +was not so empty as she seemed. She had a freight, and Yeo did not know +it. Poplar and the days of the clippers! I knew she was invisibly +peopled. Of course she was haunted. + +The shipwrecker and I went about her canted decks, groped through dark +recesses where it might have been the rats we heard, and peered into +the sonorous shades of the empty cargo spaces. In the cabins we puzzled +over those relics left by her last crew, which, without their +associations, seemed to have no reason in them. There was a mocking +silence in the cabins. What sort of men were they who were familiar +with these doors? And before the northmen had her, and she was English, +trim, and flew skysails and studding-sails, and carried lady +passengers, who were the Poplar boys that laughed and yarned here? She +was more mine than Yeo's. Let him claim her timber. All the rich +freight of her past was mine. I was the intimate of every ghost she +had. + +We sat in a cabin which had been her skipper's. There was a litter on +the floor of old newspapers and documents, receipts for harbour dues, +the captain's copies of bills of lading, store lists, and some +picture-postcards from the old man's family. A lump of indurated +plum-duff, like a geological specimen, was on the table. There was a +slant of sunshine through a square port window, and it rested on a +decayed suit of oilskins. We sat silent, the shipbreaker having +finished estimating to me, with enthusiasm, what she had of copper. He +was now waiting for his men to return to work. They were going to take +the masts out of her. But I was wondering what I could do to lay that +ghost of my old shipping parish which this craft had conjured in my +mind. And as we both sat there, looking at nothing, we heard, at the +end of the alley-way, a door stealthily latch. + +Yeo sprang to his feet at once, staring and listening. He looked at me, +surprised and puzzled. "Of all the----" he began, and stopped. He took +his seat again. "Why, of course," he said. "She's settling. That's what +it is. She's settling. But my men, the fools, will have it there's some +one pottering about this ship." + +_May 1909._ + + + + +XIV. The Sou'-Wester + + +The trees of the Embankment Gardens were nearly stripped of their +leaves, and were tossing widely. Shutting the eyes, you could think you +heard the sweep of deep-water seas with strident crests. The greater +buildings, like St. Paul's, might have been promontories looming in a +driving murk. The low sky was dark and riven, and was falling headlong. +But I liked the look of it. Here, plainly, was the end of the halcyon +days,--good-bye to the sun,--but I felt, for a reason I could not +remember and did not try to recall, pleased and satisfied with this +gale and its wrack. The clouds seemed curiously familiar. I had seen +them before somewhere; they were reminding me of a lucky but forgotten +occasion of the past. Whatever it was, no doubt it was better than +anything likely to happen today. It was something good in an old world +we have lost. But it was something of that old world, like an old book +which reads the same today; or an old friend surviving, who would help +to make endurable the years to come. I need not try to remember it. I +had got it, whatever it was, and that was all the assurance of its +wealth I wanted. Then from the river came a call, deep, prolonged, and +melancholy.... + +So that was it! No wonder the low clouds driving, and the wind in the +trees, worked that in my mind. The tide was near full. There was a +steamer moving in the Pool. She was outward bound. + +Outward bound! I saw again the black buildings of a Welsh coaling port +at evening, and a vague steamer (but no liner, that was plain enough, +no liner), and two men beside me, who were going out with me in her, +watching her. She was little more than a shadow with a port light. She +gave a deep, shuddering warning. She was off. We had been for a last +run round the town. We were to board her in the outer lock. The wind +was whining in the telegraph-wires. It was hazing the pools of rain, +which were bright and bleak with the last of a brazen yellow sunset. +"Happy days!" said one of us. "Who wouldn't sell that little farm?... +Now we're in for it. It will be the devil of an old, tough night." +(Where this night is that friend? Mine-sweeping? Patrolling? Or is +he---- But I hope not. He was a good fellow and a sailor.) + +We were better off than we knew then, though then we thought it would +be hard luck for a dog. Our thoughts turned to the snug indoor places +of the lighted town behind us; for in the small hours we should be +plunging off Hartland; with the Wolf to come, and the Bay after that; +and the glass falling. But youth did know it was young, and that this +night, wild and forbidding, and the old _Sirius_ rolling away into it, +would look fine when seen through tobacco smoke in the years to come. + +For the light we saw at sea never fades. It survives our voyaging. It +shines into the mind and abides there. We watched the horizon +steadfastly for lands we did not know. The sun came up each day to a +world that was not the same, no matter how it looked. At night we +changed our stars. We heard nothing but the wind and the waves, and the +quiet voice of a shipmate yarning with his pipe in his mouth. The +elements could interrupt us, but not the world. Not a gull of that was +left. + +And somehow the beginning of a voyage seemed to be always in westerly +weather, at the beginning of winter. The English land to me is a +twilight coast with clouds like iron above it poised in a windy light +of aquamarine, and a sunset of lucid saffron. Against that western +light, bright, bare, and penetrating as the ruthless judgment of +impersonal divinity, the polished waves mount, outlined as hard as jet, +and move towards us. The ship's prow rises to cut out segments of the +west; falls into the dark hollows of waves. The wind pours over us, an +icy and ponderable flood, and is increasing. Where England has sunk in +the dark one clear eye, like a yellow planet, comes out to watch us. + +One thinks of the sea now as something gone, like the old world. There +once a voyager was sundered from insistent trifles. He was with simple, +elemental things that have been since time began, and he had to meet +them with what skill he had, the wind for his friend and adversary, the +sun his clock, the stars for counsel, and the varying wilderness his +hope and his doubt. But the cruel misery of man did not intrude. He was +free from that. All men at sea were his fellows, whatever their +language, an ancient fraternity whose bond was a common but unspoken +knowledge of a hidden but imminent fate. They could be strangers +ashore, but not at sea. + +But that is gone now. The sea is poisoned with a deadly sorrow not its +own, which man has put there. The spaciousness of the great vault above +the round of waters is soiled by the gibbering anxieties of a thousand +gossipers of evil, which the ship catches in its wires, to darken the +night of its little company with surmises of distant malignity and woe. +It is something to retain a little of the light of the days at sea +which have passed. They too had their glooms, but they came of the +dignity of advancing storms, and the fear which great seas put in men +who held a resolute course nevertheless, knowing that their weird was +one which good seamen have faced since first the unknown beyond the +land was dared; faith, courage, and the loyalty of comrades, which all +the waters of the world cannot drown. But the heart of man, which will +face the worst the elements can do, sickens at the thought of the +perverse and inexplicable cruelty of his fellows. + +_October 1917._ + + + + +XV. On Leave + + +Coming out of Victoria Station into the stir of London again, on leave +from Flanders, must give as near the sensation of being thrust suddenly +into life from the beyond and the dead as mortal man may expect to +know. It is a surprising and providential wakening into a world which +long ago went dark. That world is strangely loud, bright, and alive. +Plainly it did not stop when, somehow, it vanished once upon a time. +There its vivid circulation moves, and the buses are so usual, the +people so brisk and intent on their own concerns, the signs so +startlingly familiar, that the man who is home again begins to doubt +that he has been absent, that he has been dead. But his uniform must +surely mean something, and its stains something more! + +And there can be no doubt about it, as you stand there a trifle dizzy +in London once more. You really have come back from another world; and +you have the curious idea that you may be invisible in this old world. +In a sense you know you are unseen. These people will never know what +you know. There they gossip in the hall, and leisurely survey the +bookstall, and they would never guess it, but you have just returned +from hell. What could they say if you told them? They would be +embarrassed, polite, forbearing, kindly, and smiling, and they would +mention the matter afterwards as a queer adventure with a poor devil +who was evidently a little over-wrought; shell shock, of course. +Beastly thing, shell shock. Seems to affect the nerves. + +They would not understand. They will never understand. What is the use +of standing in veritable daylight, and telling the living, who have +never been dead, of the other place? + +I know now how Rip Van Winkle felt about it. But his was a minor +trouble. All he lost was some years. He had not changed, except that +his beard was longer. But the man who comes back from the line has lost +more than years. He has lost his original self. People failed to +recognize Rip because they did not know his beard. Our friends do +recognize us when they greet us on our return from the front, but they +do not know us because we are not the men they remember. They are the +same as ever; but when they address us, they talk to a mind which is +not there, though the eyes betray nothing of the difference. They talk +to those who have come back to life to see them again, but who cannot +tell them what has happened, and dare not try. + +Between that old self and the man they see, there is an abyss of dread. +He has passed through it. To them the war is official _communiques_, +the amplifying dispatches of war correspondents, the silence of absent +friends in danger, the shock of a telegram, and rather interesting +food-rationing. They think it is the same war which the leave-man +knows. He will tell them all about it, and they will learn the truth at +last. + +All about it! If an apparition of the battle-line in eruption were to +form over London, over Paris, over Berlin, a sinister mirage, near, +unfading, and admonitory, with spectral figures moving in its reflected +fires and its gloom, and the echoes of their cries were heard, and +murmurs of convulsive shocks, and the wind over the roofs brought +ghostly and abominable smells into our streets; and if that were to +haunt us by day and night, a phantom from which there was no escape, to +remain till the sins of Europe were expiated, we should soon forget +politics and arguments, and be in sackcloth and ashes, positive no +longer, but down on our knees before Heaven in awe at this revelation +of social guilt, asking simply what we must do to be saved. + +Your revival at home, when on leave, is full of wonderful commonplaces, +especially now, with summer ripening. The yellow-hammer is heard on the +telegraph wire, and the voices of children in the wood, and the dust of +white English country roads is smelled at evening. All that is a +delight which is miraculous in its intensity. But it is very lonesome +and far. It is curious to feel that you are really there, delighting in +the vividness of this recollection of the past, and yet balked by the +knowledge that you are, nevertheless, outside this world of home, +though it looks and smells and sounds so close; and that you may never +enter it again. It is like the landscape in a mirror, the luminous +projection of what is behind you. But you are not there. It is +recognized, but viewed now apart and aloof, a chance glimpse at the +secure and enduring place from which you came, vouchsafed to one who +must soon return to the secret darkness in his mind. + +The home folk do not know this, and may not be told--I mean they may +not be told why it is so. The youngster who is home on leave, though he +may not have reasoned it out, knows that what he wants to say, often +prompted by indignation, cannot be said. He feels intuitively that this +is beyond his power to express. Besides, if he were to begin, where +would he end? He cannot trust himself. What would happen if he +uncovered, in a sunny and innocent breakfast-room, the horror he knows? +If he spoke out? His people would not understand him. They would think +he was mad. They would be sorry, dammit. Sorry for him! Why, he is not +sorry for himself. He can stand it now he knows what it is like. He can +stand it--if they can. And he realizes they can stand it, and are +merely anxious about his welfare, the welfare which does not trouble +him in the least, for he has looked into the depth of evil, and for him +the earth has changed; and he rather despises it. He has seen all he +wants to see of it. Let it go, dammit. If they don't mind the change, +and don't kick, why should he? What a hell of a world to be born into; +and once it did look so jolly good, too! He is shy, cheery, but +inexorably silent on what he knows. Some old fool said to him once, "It +must be pretty bad out there?" Pretty bad! What a lark! + +But for his senior, who also knows, though the feeling is the same, the +nature of the combative adult male is less shy, and not merely +negatively contemptuous, but aggressive. It is difficult for him to +endure hearing the home folk speak with the confidence of special +revelation of the war they have not seen, when he, who has been in it, +has contradictory minds about it. They are so assured that they think +there can be no other view; and they bear out their mathematical +arguments with maps and figures. It might be a chess tournament. He +feels at last his anger beginning to smoulder. He feels a bleak and +impalpable alienation from those who are all the world to him. He +understands at last that they also are in the mirror, projected from +his world that was, and that now he cannot come near them. Yet though +he knows it, they do not. The greatest evil of war--this is what +staggers you when you come home, feeling you know the worst of it--is +the unconscious indifference to war's obscene blasphemy against life of +the men and women who have the assurance that they will never be called +on to experience it. Out there, comrades in a common and unlightened +affliction shake a fist humorously at the disregarding stars, and mock +them. Let the Fates do their worst. The sooner it is over, the better; +and, while waiting, they will take it out of Old Jerry. He is the only +one out of whom they can take it. They are to throw away their world +and die, so they must take it out of somebody. Therefore Jerry "gets it +in the neck." Men under the irrefragable compulsion of a common spell, +who are selected for sacrifice in the fervour of a general obsession, +but who are cooly awake to the unreason which locks the minds of their +fellows, will burst into fury at the bond they feel. The obvious +obstruction is the obstinate "blighter" with a machine-gun in front of +them. At least, they are free to "strafe" him. + +But what is the matter with London? The men on leave, when they meet +each other, always ask that question without hope, in the seclusion of +their confidence and special knowledge. They feel perversely they would +sooner be amid the hated filth and smells of the battle-ground than at +home. Out there, though possibly mischance may suddenly extinguish the +day for them, they will be with those who understand, with comrades who +rarely discuss the war except obliquely and with quiet and bitter +jesting. Seeing the world has gone wrong, how much better and easier it +is to take the likelihood of extinction with men who have the same +mental disgust as your own, and can endure it till they die, but who, +while they live in the same torment with you, have the unspoken but +certain conviction that Europe is a decadent old beast eating her young +with insatiable appetite, than to sit in sunny breakfast-rooms with the +newspaper maps and positive arguments of the unsaved! + +_Autumn 1917._ + + + + +XVI. The Dunes + + +The dunes are in another world. They are two miles across the uncertain +and hazardous tide races of the estuary. The folk of the village never +go over. The dunes are nothing. They are the horizon. They are only +seen in idleness, or when the weather is scanned, or an incoming ship +is marked. The dunes are but a pallid phantom of land so delicately +golden that it is surprising to find it constant. The faint glow of +that dilated shore, quavering just above the sea, the sea intensely +blue and positive, might wreathe and vanish at any moment in the pour +of wind from the Atlantic, whose endless strength easily bears in and +over us vast involuted continents of white cloud. The dunes tremble in +the broad flood of wind, light, and sea, diaphanous and fading, always +on the limit of vision, the point of disappearing, but are established. +They are soundless, immaterial, and far, like a pleasing and personal +illusion, a luminous dream of lasting tranquillity in a better but an +unapproachable place, and the thought of crossing to them never +suggests anything so obvious as a boat. They look like no coast that +could be reached. + +It was a perverse tide on a windless day which drifted me over. The +green mounds of water were flawless, with shadows of mysteries in their +clear deeps. The boat and the tide were murmuring to each other +secretly. The boat's thwarts were hot and dry in the sun. The serene +immensity of the sky, the warmth and dryness of the boat's timbers, the +deep and translucent waters, and the coast so low and indistinct that +the silent flashing of the combers there might have been on nothing +substantial, were all timeless, and could have been but a thought and a +desire; they were like a memorable morning in a Floridan cay +miraculously returned. The boat did not move; the shore approached, +revealed itself. It was something granted on a lucky day. This country +would not be on the map. + +I landed on a broad margin of sand which the tide had just left. It was +filmed with water. It was a mirror in which the sky was inverted. When +a breath of air passed over that polished surface it was as though the +earth were a shining bubble which then nearly burst. To dare that +foothold might precipitate the intruder on ancient magic to cloudland +floating miles beneath the feet. But I had had the propriety to go +barefooted, and had lightened my mind before beginning the voyage. Here +I felt I was breaking into what was still only the first day, for man +had never measured this place with his countless interruptions of +darkness. I don't know whether that mirror had ever been darkened till +I put my foot in it. After the news I had heard on the quay that +morning before starting out, news just arrived from London, the dunes +were an unexpected assurance that the earth has an integrity and purity +of its own, a quality which even man cannot irreparably soil; that it +maintains a pristine health and bloom invulnerable to the best our +heroic and intelligent activities can accomplish, and could easily +survive our extinction, and even forget it once supported us. + +I found an empty bottle among the dry litter and drift above the +tide-mark, sole relic, as far as could be seen there, of man. No +message was in the bottle. The black bottle itself was forlornly the +message, but it lay there unregarded by the bright immemorial genius of +that coast. Yet it settled one doubt. This was not a land which had +never known man. It had merely forgotten it had known him. He had been +there, but whatever difference he had made was of the same significance +now as the dry bladder-wrack, the mummied gull near by, and the +bleached shells. The next tide probably would hide the memento for +ever. At the time this did not seem an unhappy thought, though the +relic had been our last witness, so enduring was the tenuous brightness +of the place, the shrine of our particular star, the visible aura of +earth. We rarely see it. It is something to be reminded it is not lost; +that we cannot, whatever else we can do, put out a celestial light. + +Above the steep beach a dry flat opened out, reached only by gales and +the highest of the spring tides, a wilderness of fine sand, hot and +deep, its surface studded with the opaque blue of round pebbles and +mussel shells. It looked too arid to support life, but sea-rocket with +fleshy emerald stems and lilac flowers was scattered about. Nothing +moved in the waste but an impulsive small butterfly, blue as a fragment +of sky. The silence of the desert was that of a dream, but when +listening to the quiet, a murmur which had been below hearing was +imagined. The dunes were quivering with the intensity of some latent +energy, and it might have been that one heard, or else it was the +remembrance held by that strand of a storm which had passed, or it +might have been the ardent shafts of the sun. At the landward end of +the waste, by the foot of the dunes, was an old beam of a ship, harsh +with barnacles, its bolt-holes stopped with dust. A spinous shrub grew +to one side of it. A solitary wasp, a slender creature in black and +gold, quick and emotional, had made a cabin of one of the holes in the +timber. For some reason that fragment of a barque was more eloquent of +travel, and the work of seamen gone, than any of the craft moored at +the quay I left that morning. I smoked a pipe on that timber--for all I +knew, not for the first time--and did not feel at all lonely, nor that +voyages for the discovery of fairer times were finished. + +Now the dunes were close they appeared surprisingly high, and were +formed, not like hills, but like the high Alps. They had the peaks and +declivities of mountains. Their colour was of old ivory, and the long +marram grass which grew on them sparsely was as fine as green hair. The +hollowed slope before me was so pale, spacious, and immaculate that +there was an instinctive hesitation about taking it. A dark ghost began +slowly to traverse it with outspread arms, a shade so distinct on that +virgin surface that not till the gull, whose shadow it was, had gone +inland, following its shadow over the high yellow ridge, did I know +that I had not been looking at the personality. But the surface had +been darkened, and I could overcome my hesitation. + +From the ridge, the country of the dunes opened inland with the +enlarged likeness of a lunar landscape surveyed in a telescope. It +merely appeared to be near. The sand-hills, with their acute outlines, +and their shadows flung rigidly from their peaks across the pallor of +their slopes, were the apparition of inviolable seclusion. They could +have been waiting upon an event secret from our knowledge, larger than +the measure of our experience; so they had still the aspect of a +strange world, not only infinitely remote, but superior with a greater +destiny. They were old, greatly older than the ancient village across +the water. Ships left the village and went by them to sea gay with the +bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and +when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea +moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, +vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and +import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, all on +the same day. + +Only when resting on a knoll of one of the slopes, where the shadows of +a tuft of marram grass above my head lay as thin black wire on the +sand, were the dunes caught in part of their secret. There was no +sound. I heard the outer world from which I had come only as the +whistle of a curlew. It was far away now. To this place, the news I had +heard on the quay that morning would have sounded the same as Waterloo, +which was yesterday, or the Armada, which was the same day--wasn't +it?--or the day before, or as the whistle of a curlew. Here we were +outside time. Then I thought I heard a faint whisper, but when I looked +round nothing had altered. The shadows of the grass formed a fixed +metallic design on the sand. But I heard the whisper again, and with a +side glance caught the dune stealthily on the move. + +It was alive. When you were not attentive, some of its grains would +start furtively, pour in increasing mobility fanwise, and rest +instantly when looked at. This hill was fluid, and circulated. It +preserved an outline that was fixed through the years, a known, named, +and charted locality, only to those to whom one map would serve a +lifetime. But it was really unknown. It was on its way. Like the ships +that were passing, it also was passing. It was only taking its own +time. + +Secluded within the inner ranges were little valleys, where, for a +while, the dunes had ceased to travel, and were at leisure. I got into +a hollow which had a floor of hoary lichen, with bronze hummocks of +moss. In this moment of pause it had assumed a look of what we call +antiquity. The valley was not abundant with vegetation, but enamelled +and jewelled. A more concentrated, hectic, and volatile essence sent up +stalks, blades, and sprays, with that direction and restraint which +perfection needs. More than in a likelier and fecund spot, in this +valley the ichor showed the ardour and flush of its early vitality. +Even now it could shape like this, and give these dyes! Chosen by an +earth astringent and tonic, the forms were few and personal. Here you +should see to what influences our planet is still subject. The shapes +in that valley were more than coloured; they were rare jets of light, +emerald, orange, blue, and scarlet. Life burned with an original force, +a steady virtue. What is "good news"? It depends on the sort of +evidence for which we look. + +Just showing in the drift on the seaward side of the valley were some +worked stones and a little brickwork. When the sandhill paused, it had +almost covered a building where man once worshipped. I could find +nobody afterwards who remembered the church, or had even heard of it. +Yet the doom of this temple, prolonged in its approach but inevitable, +to those to whom the altar once had seemed as indestructible as hope, +must on a day have struck the men who saw at last their temple's end +was near as a hint, vague but glacial, of the transience of all their +affairs. + +But what were their affairs? We should have to know them before we +could regret the dry sand which buried them. The valley looked very +well as it was. It showed no sign of failure. Over one of the stones of +the forgotten altar was a casual weed which stood like a sign of +success and continuance. It was as indecipherable as the stone, but the +blue of its flowers, still and deep as rapture, surprising and +satisfying as an unexpected revelation of good, would have been better +worth reading for a knowledge of the heart from which could be drawn +the temper and intensity of that faith. + +_August 1917._ + + + + +XVII. Binding a Spell + + +You may never have addressed a meeting of the public, but you have long +cherished a vision of a figure (well known to your private mirror) +standing where it overlooks an intent and silent multitude to which it +communicates with apt and fluent words those things not seen by mortal +eyes, the dream of a world not ours.... You know what I mean. (Loud and +prolonged applause.) + +"I should be glad," wrote one who is still unashamed to call himself my +friend, "if you could run down here one evening and address a meeting +on your experiences. Just conversationally, you know." + +A casual sort of letter. Designedly so. But I could see through it. It +was an invitation which did not wish to scare me from accepting it. I +smiled with serene amusement at its concluding sentence. +Conversationally! Why, that would be merely talking; tongue-work; +keeping on and on after one usually, if merciful to a friend, lets him +off. I felt instantly that for once it might be even more pleasant to +entertain an audience than to be one of the crowd and bored. And it +happened that my experiences really did give me something to say, and +were exactly what an audience, in war-time, might be glad to hear. I +therefore wrote a brief note of acceptance, as one to whom this sort of +thing comes ten times a day; and thought no more about it. + +No more, that is to say, till I saw the local paper announced me as a +coming event, a treat in store. I was on the list. There were those +that evening who, instead of going to a theatre, a concert, or to see +Vesta Tilley, would come to hear me. I felt then the first cold +underdraught of doubt, the chilling intimation from the bleak unknown, +where it is your own affair entirely whether you flourish or perish. +What a draught! I got up, shut the door, and looked at the day of the +month. + +That was all right; yet another fortnight! + +But what weakness was this? Anybody, could do it, if they knew as much +of my subject as did I. Many men would do it, without a tremor, without +shame, if they knew next to nothing about it. Look at old Brown, for +example, whose only emotions are evoked by being late for dinner, the +price of building materials, the scandalous incapacity of workmen, and +the restriction of the liberty of the subject by trade unions! He will +sit, everybody knows, while wearing plaid trousers and side-whiskers, +on the right hand of a peer, in full view of thousands, at a political +meeting, untroubled, bland, conscious of his worth, and will rise at +the word, thumbs carelessly thrust into his waistcoat pockets, begin +with a jest (the same one), and for an hour make aspirates as uncommon +as are bathrooms in his many houses. + +He has nothing to say, and could not say it if he had; but he can speak +in public. You will observe the inference is obvious. One who is really +capable of constructive thought (like you and me); who has a wide range +of words to choose from even when running; who is touched, by events, +to admiration, to indignation, to alarm, to--to all that sort of thing, +he could ... the plastic audience would be in his skilful hands, there +is no doubt. (Hear, hear!) + +Time passed. As Mr. A. Ward once pointed out, it is a way time has. The +night came, as at last I began to fear it would. My brief notes were in +my pocket, for I had resolutely put from me the dishonourable and +barren safety of a written lecture. In the train--how cold was the +night--I wished I had gone more fully into the matter. Slightly +shivering, I tried to recall the dry humour of those carefully prepared +opening sentences which shortly would prove to my audience that I had +their measure, and was at ease; would prove that my elevation on the +platform was not merely through four feet of deal planking, but was a +real overlooking. But those delicate sentences had broken somehow. They +were shards, and not a glitter of humour was sticking to the fragments. + +I felt I would rather again approach one of those towns in France, +where it was likely you would run into the Uhlans, than go to that +lecture hall. No doubt, too, my friend had explained to them what a +clever fellow I was, in order to get some reflected glory out of it. +Then it would serve him right; there would be two of us. + +The hall was nearly full. What surprises one is to find so many ladies +present. A most disquieting fact, entirely unforeseen. They sit in the +front rows and wait, evidently in a tranquil, alert, and mirthful mind, +for you to begin. I could hear their leisurely converse and occasional +subdued laughter (about what?) even where, in a sort of frozen, lucid +calm, indifferent to my fate, the mood of all Englishmen in moments of +extreme peril, I was handing my hat and coat to my friend in a room +behind the platform. All those people out there were waiting for me. + +When we got on the platform the chairman told them something about me, +I don't know what, but when I looked up it was to find, like the soul +in torment, that a multitude of bodiless eyes had fixed me--eyes +intent, curious, passionless. + +"I call upon--" said the chairman. + +I stood up. The sound of my voice uplifted in that silence was the most +startling sound I have ever heard. Shortly after that there came the +paralysing discovery that it is a gift to be able to think while +hundreds wait patiently to see what the thought is like when it comes. +This made my brow hot. There was a boy in an Eton suit, sitting in +front with his legs wide apart, who was grinning at me through his +spectacles. How he got there I don't know. I think he was the gift of +the gods. His smile so annoyed me that I forgot myself, which saved me. +I just talked to that boy. + +Once there was loud laughter. Why? It is inexplicable. I talked for +about an hour. About what? Heaven knows. The chairman kindly let me out +through a side entrance. + + + + +XVIII. A Division on the March + + +We passed a division on the march the other day. Though the British +occupy this country, it is not often one sees them as a multitude. When +in the trenches, you are concerned with but a handful of your fellows. +But just then an interminable river of steel helmets poured along in +regular waves. + +It is something to be able to say you have seen a British army moving +down the straight leagues of a French road through its guarding avenue +of trees. My own brother may have been in that host.... Yet I never +thought of him. A torrent of sounds swamped and submerged my +thoughts--the clangour of chains, the rumbling of wheels, the deep +growling of guns; and that most ominous and subduing sound in war, the +ceaseless rhythmic tramp of armed men marching without music or song, +men who, except the menace of their measured progress, that intimation +of destiny and fate irresistible, are but a multitude of expressionless +masks that glance at you, and pass. + +These men are all dressed alike; they are a tide of men. They all look +alike. Their mouths are set. They move together with the common, +irresistible, uncritical urge of migratory animals. Their eyes fix you +in a single ceaseless interrogation. About what? + +There is no knowing. Don't ask me what the men are thinking in +Flanders; I don't know, and I have been with them since the beginning. +And I don't think any one else does. + +But once, as this division was passing, one of those little go-carts on +perambulator wheels in which the men, holding drag-ropes, transport +their own personal belongings, upset a few books. You would have +recognized their popular covers; and the anxiety, instantly shown, to +recover those treasures, broke up the formation there for a few moments +into something human and understandable. The wind took a few escaped +leaves and blew them to me. The _Pickwick Papers_! + +It was as though the inscrutable eye of the army had tipped me a wink. + +I got the hint that I was, in the right sense, on the same road as +these men. My brother was certainly there. For sometimes, you know, one +has a bleak sense of doubt about that, a feeling of extreme isolation +and polar loneliness. You wonder, at times, mixed up here in the +mysterious complexities of that elemental impulse which is visible as +ceaseless clouds of fire on the Somme, whether you are the last man, +witnessing in helpless and mute horror the motiveless upheaval of earth +in final ruin. + +So that, even as I write this, and glance, safe for tonight, at the +strangeness of this French house, I see everything about me with +astonishment, and feel I may wake at any moment to the familiar things +of that home in which I fell asleep to dream of calamity. + +Moving about this dubious and unauthentic scene of war, an atom of a +fortuitous host, each one of the host glancing at me with inscrutable +eyes which seem to show in passing--if they show anything at all--a +faint hint of reproach, the interruption of war by the page of a +familiar book, and the sudden anxious effort by one of the uniformed +phantoms to recover words which you remember well enough were once +worth hearing, was like momentary recovery. An unexpected revelation. +For a moment I saw the same old enduring earth under us. All was well. + +I often doubt here the existence of a man who is talking to me. He +seems altogether incredible. He might be talking across the Styx; and I +am not sure at the moment on which side of that river I stand. Is he on +the right side or am I? Which of us has got the place where a daily sun +still rises? Yes, it is the living men here who are the uncanny +spectres. + +I have come in a lonely spot upon a little cross by the wayside, and +have been stopped by a familiar name on it. Dead? No. There, right +enough, is my veritable friend, as I knew and admired him. He cannot be +dead. But those men in muddy clothes who sometimes consort with me +round the burning logs on the hearth of an old chateau at night, I look +across the floor at them as across countless ages, and listen to their +voices till they sound unintelligibly from a remote and alien past. I +do not know what they say to me. I am encompassed by dark and insoluble +magic, and have forgotten the Open Sesame, though I try hard to +remember it; for these present circumstances and the beings who move in +them are of a world unreal and unreasonable. + +I get up from the talk of war by that fireside of an old chateau built +on a still more ancient field where English archers fought a famous +battle six hundred years ago. A candle stands on a bracket beneath a +portrait of a lady. The lady is in the dress of the days of the French +Revolution. She is young and vivid, and looks down at me under lowered +eyelids in amused and enticing scrutiny. Her little mouth has the +faintest trace of a contemplative smile; and as I look at her I could +swear the corners of her mouth twitch, as if in the restraint of +complete understanding. + +She is long gone. She was executed at Arras. But I know her well. The +chateau is less cold and lonely than it was. + +Old stairs wind upwards to a long corridor, the distant ends of which +are unseen. A few candles gutter in the draughts. The shadows leap. The +place is so still that I can hear the antique timbers talking. But +something is without which is not the noise of the wind. I listen, and +hear it again, the darkness throbbing; the badly adjusted horizon of +outer night thudding on the earth--the incessant guns of the great war. + +And I come, for this night at least, to my room. On the wall is a tiny +silver Christ on a crucifix; and above that the portrait of a child, +who fixes me in the surprise of innocence, questioning and loveable, +the very look of warm April and timid but confiding light. I sleep with +the knowledge of that over me, an assurance greater than that of all +the guns of all the hosts. It is a promise. I may wake to the earth I +used to know in the morning. + +_Winter 1917._ + + + + +XIX. Holly-Ho! + + +In the train bound for the leave boat, just before Christmas, the +Knight-Errant, who also was returning to the front, re-wrote the +well-known hymn of Phillips Brooks for me, to make the time pass. It +began: + + "Oh little town of Bethlehem, + To thee we give the lie." + +So you may guess, though I shan't tell you, how it continued. For the +iron was in the soul of the Knight and misery was twisting it. I cannot +pretend it was a pleasure trip. This was to be our third Christmas in +Flanders. Is it any good trying to pass on the emotion common to men +who go to that place because they must? No, it is not. Yet, throughout +the journey to the boat, I was not astonished at the loud gaiety of +many of our passengers. I have got used to it; for they were like that +when they landed at Boulogne in August 1914; and they will be no +different when they come back for good, to comfortable observers who +prefer to be satisfied easily. + +There was a noise of musical instruments and untractable boots on the +floor-boards. While waiting in the nervous queue on the Day of Judgment +one of those fellows will address a mouth organ to the responsive feet +of a pal, and the others will look on with intent approval, indifferent +to Gabriel. Having watched disaster experiment variously with my +countrymen for three years, I begin to understand why once the French +hated us, why lately they have learned to admire us and to be amused by +us, why the blunders of our governing classes don't damage us vitally +(which seems miraculous unless you know the reason); and, indeed, why +that blessed flag has braved a thousand years the battle and the +breeze. + +It is because the quality of our Nobodies (about whom a great epic will +get written when a poet is born good enough and big enough to receive +the inspiration), it is because any average Nobody has a cool +impregnability to the worst bad luck can do which is supernal. That +gives the affair something of the comic. That is what makes the humour +of the front. And after the first silent pause of respect and wonder at +one more story of the sort a journalist knows so well who knows but a +little of railway men and miners, seamstresses and the mothers in mean +streets, and ships and the sea, one cannot help chuckling. Again, the +sons of Smith and Jones and Robin! The well-born, the clever, the +haughty, and the greedy, in their fear, pride, and wilfulness, and the +perplexity of their scheming, make a general mess of the world. +Forthwith in a panic they cry, "Calamity cometh!" + +Then out from their obscurity, where they dwelt because of their low +worth, arise the Nobodies; because theirs is the historic job of +restoring again the upset balance of affairs. They make no fuss about +it. Theirs is always the hard and dirty work. They have always done it. +If they don't do it, it will not be done. They fall with a will and +without complaint upon the wreckage wilfully made of generations of +such labour as theirs, to get the world right again, to make it +habitable again, though not for themselves; for them, they must spend +the rest of their lives recreating order out of chaos. A hopeless task; +but they continue at it unmurmuring, giving their bodies without stint, +as once they gave their labour, to the fields and the sea. And some day +the planet will get back to its old place under the sun; but not for +them, not for them. + +A Nobody never seems to know anything, but by the grace of God he gets +there just the same. I was not far from Ypres and the line of the Yser +during the first battle for the Channel ports. Do you know how near we +were to the edge of the precipice not long before that Christmas? We +were on the verge. We were nearly over. I knew it then. So when, later +still, I used to meet in France an enigmatic, clay-coloured figure with +a visage seamed with humorous dolours, loaded with pioneering and +warlike implements, rifles, knives, tin hats, and gas masks, I always +felt I ought to get down and walk. Instead of which he used to salute +me as smartly as he could. He will never know how cheap and embarrassed +he used to make me feel. I wish I knew enough to do him some justice. + +And here once more is the leave boat, and this is another Christmas +Eve. It was a still twilight, with a calm sea and a swell on our +starboard beam. We rolled. We looked back on England sinking in the +night. A black smudge of a destroyer followed us over with its eye on +us. The main deck was crowded with soldiers--you could not get along +there--singing in their lifebelts; at times the chorus, if approved, +became a unanimous roar. They didn't want to be there. They didn't want +to die. They wanted to go home. But they sang with dolorous joy. The +chorus died; and we heard again the deep monody of the sea, like the +admonitory voice of fate. The battles of the Somme were to come before +the next Christmas; though none of us on that boat knew it then. And +where is the young officer who went ashore under the electric glare of +the base port, singing also, and bearing a Christmas tree? Where is +that wild lieutenant of the Black Watch--he had a splendid eye, and a +voice for a Burns midnight--who cried rollicking answers from the back +of the crowd to the peremptory megaphone of the landing officer, till +the ship was loud and gay, and the authorities got really wild? And the +boy of a new draft, whose face, as I passed him where he had fallen +in,--the light dropped to it,--was pale and nervous, and his teeth +chattering! Ah, the men we met in France, and the faces we saw briefly, +but remember, that were before the Somme! Shadows, shadows. + +It rained next morning. This was Christmas Day. We were going to the +trenches. Christians awake, salute the happy morn. There was a prospect +of straight road with an avenue of diminishing poplars going east, in +an inky smear, to the Germans and infinity. The rain lashed into my +northerly ear, and the A.S.C. motor-car driver, who was mad, kept +missing three-ton lorries and gun-limbers by the width of the paint. +One transport mule, who pretended to be frightened of us, but whose +father was the devil and his mother an ass, plunged into a pond of +black Flanders mud as we passed, and raked us with solvent filth. We +wiped it off our mouths. God rest you merry, gentlemen. A land so +inundated that it inverted the raw and alien sky was on either hand. +The mud clung to the horses and mules like dangling walnuts and bunches +of earthy and glistening grapes. The men humped themselves in soddened +khaki. The noise of the wheels bearing guns was like the sound of doom. +The rain it rained. O come, all ye faithful! + +We got to a place where there was no more wheeled traffic. There was +nothing moving, nothing alive. That country was apparently abandoned. +To our front and left, for no apparent reason, three little dirty +yellow clouds burst simultaneously over a copse, with a smash which +made you feel you ought to be tolerant to men with shell-shock. On our +right was an empty field. Short momentary flames leaped constantly from +its farthermost hedge, with a noise like the rapid slamming of a row of +iron doors. Heavy eruptions, as though subterranean, were going on all +the time, the Lord knew where. But not a man was in sight till we got +to a village which looked like Gomorrah the day after it happened. Some +smoke and red dust were just settling by one of the ruins, and a man +lay there motionless with his face in the rubbish.... + +There was a habitation where sacking kept the wind and rain from +unlucky holes, with holly behind pictures tacked to its walls, and a +special piece of inviting mistletoe over a saucy lady from _La Vie +Parisienne_. There was an elderly and serious colonel, who had an +ancestor at Chevy Chase, but himself held independent views on war; and +a bunch of modest boys with sparkling eyes and blithe and ironic +comments. They also did not discuss the war in the way it is discussed +where war is but lowered street lights. We had bully beef, the right +sort of pudding,--those boys must have had very nice sisters,--and +frosted cake. There were noises without, as the book of the play has +it, and plenty of laughter within, and I enjoyed myself with a sort of +veiled, subconscious misery; for I liked those lads; and we are so +transitory today. + +Then one of them took me for a Christmas walk in his country. "Have you +got your gas helmet?" he said. "That's right. It makes your eyes stream +with tears, and you look such a silly ass." On we went. I began +Christmas Day in the trenches by discovering the bottom of the mud too +late; though you never can tell, when a noise like the collapse of an +iron roof goes off behind you, where you are going to put your feet at +that moment. We went through a little wood, where the trees were like +broken poles with chewed ends. Over our heads were invisible things +which moaned, shrieked, and roared in flight. It was astonishing that +they were invisible. Sometimes the bottom of the mud of that +communication trench was close, and sometimes not; you knew when you +had tried. And as the parapets usually had dissolved at the more +dubious places, and I was told and heard that Fritz had machine guns +trained on them, I did not waste much time experimenting. + +I found the firing-line, as one usually does, with surprise. There was +a barrier of sandbags, oozing grey slime, and below, in a sort of +little cave, with his body partly resting in a pool of water, a soldier +asleep. Just beyond was a figure so merged in the environment of +aqueous muck and slime that I did not see him till he moved, and his +boots squelched. He lifted a wet rag in the grey wall and got +surprisingly rapid with a rifle which was thrust through the hole and +went off; and then turned to look at us. "That fellow opposite is a +nuisance," said my officer. "He's always potting at this corner." "Yes, +sir," said the figure of mud, darkly louring under its tin hat, "but I +know where the blighter is now, and I'll get the beggar yet." With a +sudden recollection he then touched iron, and grinned. + +Slithering above the ankles in well-worked paste, and leaning against a +wall of slime, I tried to find "the nuisance opposite" with a +periscope; but before me was only a tangle of rusty wire, a number of +raw holes in shabby green grass, some objects lying about which looked +like tailors' dummies discarded to the weather, and an awe-inspiring +stillness. + +There were some interchanges with serious men, who did not sing, but +who sat about in mud, or leaned against it, and were covered with it, +or who were waiting with rifles ready, or looking through periscopes, +or doing things over fires which smoked till the eyes were red. "Come +and see our mine crater," said my guide. "It's a topper. Fritz made it, +but we've got it." + +I knew where that crater would be, and I thought the less of it as a +spectacle. But "out there" one must follow one's leader wherever he +goes. He was going to make me crawl after him in "No Man's Land," and +it was not dark yet. So I acquired that sinking sensation described in +the pill advertisements. The mud got down our collars; but we arrived, +though I don't know how, because I was thinking too much. It was only a +deep yellow hole in the ground, too, that crater, with barbed wire +spilled into it and round it; and you were warned to breathe gently in +it, for Fritz might lob a bomb over. He was six yards off. + +In the forlorn and dying light of that Christmas Day I then noticed a +muffled youngster beside me, who might have been your son, alone, +gripping a rifle with a fixed bayonet, his thoughts Heaven knows where, +a box of bombs ready to hand in the filth; and his charge was to give +first warning of movement in that stillness beyond. As we crawled away, +leaving him there, I turned to look at that boy of yours, and his eyes +met mine.... + +_December 1916._ + + + + +XX. The Ruins + + +For more than two years this town could not have been more remote from +us if it had been in another planet. We were but a few miles from it, +but the hills hid it, and the enemy was between us and the hills. This +town was but a name, a legend. + +Now the enemy had left it. When going into it for the first time you +had the feeling that either you or the town was bewitched. Were you +really there? Were time and space abolished? Or perhaps the town itself +was supernatural; it was spectral, projected by unknowable evil. And +for what purpose? Suspicious of its silence, of its solitude, of all +its aspects, you verified its stones by touching them, and looked about +for signs that men had once been there. + +Such a town, which has long been in the zone of fire, and is then +uncovered by the foe, gives a wayfarer who early ventures into it the +feeling that this is the day after the Last Day, and that he has been +overlooked. Somehow he did not hear Gabriel's trumpet; everybody else +has gone on. There is not a sound but the subdued crackling of flames +hidden somewhere in the overthrown and abandoned. There is no movement +but where faint smoke is wreathing slowly across the deserted streets. +The unexpected collapse of a wall or cornice is frightful. So is the +silence which follows. A starved kitten, which shapes out of nothing +and is there complete and instantaneous at your feet--ginger stripes, +and a mew which is weak, but a veritable voice of the living--is first +a great surprise, and then a ridiculous comfort. It follows you about. +When you miss it, you go back to look for it--to find the miserable +object racing frantically to meet you. Lonely? The Poles are not more +desolate. There is no place as forlorn as that where man once was +established and busy, where the patient work of his hands is all round, +but where silence has fallen like a secret so dense that you feel that +if it were not also so desperately invisible you could grasp a corner +of it, lift the dark veil, and learn a little of what was the doom of +those who have vanished. What happened to them? + +It cannot be guessed. House fronts have collapsed in rubble across the +road. There is a smell of opened vaults. All the homes are blind. Their +eyes have been put out. Many of the buildings are without roofs, and +their walls have come down to raw serrations. Slates and tiles have +avalanched into the street, or the roof itself is entire, but has +dropped sideways over the ruin below as a drunken cap over the +dissolute. The lower floors are heaps of damp mortar and bricks. Very +rarely a solitary picture hangs awry on the wall of a house where there +is no other sign that it was ever inhabited. I saw in such a room the +portrait of a child who in some moment long ago laughed while it +clasped a dog in a garden. You continue to gaze at a sign like that, +you don't know why, as though something you cannot name might be +divined, if you could but hit upon the key to the spell. What is the +name of the evil that has fallen on mankind? + +The gardens beyond are to be seen through the thin and gaping walls of +the streets, and there, overturned and defaced by shell-bursts and the +crude subsoil thrown out from dug-outs, a few ragged shrubs survive. A +rustic bower is lumbered with empty bottles, meat tins, a bird-cage, +and ugly litter and fragments. It is the flies which find these gardens +pleasant. Theirs is now the only voice of Summer, as though they were +loathly in the mouth of Summer's carcase. It is perplexing to find how +little remains of the common things of the household: a broken doll, a +child's boot, a trampled bonnet. Once in such a town I found a +corn-chandler's ledger. + +It was lying open in the muck of the roadway, wet and discoloured. Till +that moment I had not come to the point of believing the place. The +town was not humane. It was not credible. It might have been, for all I +could tell, a simulacrum of the work of men. Perhaps it was the patient +and particular mimicry of us by an unknown power, a power which was +alarmingly interested in our doings; and in a frenzy over its partial +failure it had attempted to demolish its laborious semblance of what we +do. Was this power still observant of its work, and conscious of +intruders? All this was a sinister warning of something invisible and +malign, which brooded over our affairs, knew us too well, though +omitting the heart of us, and it was mocking us now by defiling in an +inhuman rage its own caricature of our appearance. + +But there, lying in the road, was that corn-chandler's ledger. It was +the first understandable thing I had seen that day. I began to believe +these abandoned and silent ruins had lived and flourished, had once a +warm kindred life moving in their empty chambers; enclosed a +comfortable community, like placid Casterbridge. Men did stand here on +sunny market days, and sorted wheat in the hollows of their hands. And +with all that wide and hideous disaster of the Somme around it was +suddenly understood (as when an essential light at home, but a light +that has been casually valued, goes out, and leaves you to the dark) +that an elderly farmer, looking for the best seed corn in the +market-place, while his daughter the dairymaid is flirting with his +neighbour's son, are more to us than all the Importances and the Great +Ones who in all history till now have proudly and expertly tended their +culture of discords. + +I don't know that I ever read a book with more interest than that +corn-chandler's ledger; though at one time, when it was merely a +commonplace record of the common life which circulated there, +testifying to its industry and the response of earth, it would have +been no matter to me. Not for such successes are our flags displayed +and our bells set pealing. It named customers at Thiepval, Martinpuich, +Courcelette, Combles, Longueval, Contalmaison, Pozieres, Guillemont, +Montauban. It was not easy to understand it, my knowledge of those +places being what it was. Those villages did not exist, except as +corruption in a land that was tumbled into waves of glistening clay +where the bodies of men were rotting disregarded like those of dogs +sprawled on a midden. My knowledge of that country, got with some +fatigue, anxiety, fright and on certain days dull contempt for the +worst that could happen, because it seemed that nothing could matter +any more, my idea of that country was such that the contrast of those +ledger accounts was uncanny and unbelievable. Yet amid all the misery +and horror of the Somme, with its shattering reminder of finality and +futility at every step whichever way you turned, that ledger in the +road, with none to read it, was the gospel promising that life should +rise again; the suggestion of a forgotten but surviving virtue which +would return, and cover the dread we knew, till a ploughman of the +future would stop at rare relics, holding them up to the sun, and dimly +recall ancient tales of woe. + +_Spring 1917._ + + + + +XXI. Lent, 1918 + + +It was Meredith's country, and Atlantic weather in Lent. The downs were +dilated and clear as though seen through crystal. A far company of +pines on the high skyline were magnified into delicate inky figures. +The vacant sward below them was as lucent as the slope of a vast +approaching wave. A blackbird was fluting after a shower, for the sky +was transient blue with the dark rags of the squall flying fast over +the hill towards London. The thatched roof of a cottage in the valley +suddenly flamed with a light of no earthly fire, as though a god had +arrived, and that was the sign. Miss Muffet, whose profile, having the +breeze and the surprise of the sun in her hair, was dedicated with a +quivering and aureate nimbus, pulled aside the brush of a small yew, +and exclaimed; for there, neatly set in the angle of the bough, was a +brown cup with three blue eggs in it. I saw all this, and tried my best +to get back to it; but I was not there. I saw it clearly--the late +shower glittered on my coat and on the yew with the nest in it--but it +was a scene remote as a memorable hour of a Surrey April of years ago. +I could not approach; so I went back into the house. + +But there was no escape. For I freely own that I am one of those who +refused to believe there would be "a great offensive." (Curse such +trite and sounding words, which put measureless misery through the mind +as unconsciously as a boy repeats something of Euclid.) I believe that +no man would now dare to order it. The soldiers, I knew, with all the +signs before them, still could not credit that it would be done. The +futile wickedness of these slaughters had been proved too often. They +get nowhere. They settle nothing. This last, if it came, would be worse +than all the rest in its magnitude and horror; it would deprive Europe +of a multitude more of our diminishing youth, and end, in the +exhaustion of its impetus, with peace no nearer than before. The old +and indurated Importances in authority, safe far behind the lines, +would shrink from squandering humanity's remaining gold of its life, +even though their ignoble ends were yet unachieved. But it had been +ordered. Age, its blind jealousy for control now stark mad, impotent in +all but the will and the power to command and punish, ignoring every +obvious lesson of the past, the appeal of the tortured for the sun +again and leisure even to weep, and the untimely bones of the young as +usual now as flints in the earth of Europe, had deliberately put out +the glimmer of dawn. + +Well for those who may read the papers without personal knowledge of +what happens when such a combat has begun; but to know, and to be +useless; to be looking with that knowledge at Meredith's country in +radiant April! There are occasions, though luckily they come but once +or twice in life, when the mind is shocked by the basal verities +apparently moving as though they were fugitive; thought becomes dizzy +at the daylight earth suddenly falling away at one's feet to the +vacuity of the night. Some choice had to be made. I recalled another +such mental convulsion: by Amiens Cathedral, near midnight, nearly four +years ago, with the French guns rumbling through the city in retreat, +and the certainty that the enemy would be there by morning on his way +to Paris. One thing a campaigner learns: that matters are rarely quite +so bad or so good as they seem. Saying this to my friend, the farmer +(who replied that, in any case, he must go and look to the cows), I +turned to some books. + +Yet resolution is needed to get the thoughts indoors at such a time. +They are out of command. A fire is necessary. You must sit beside a +company of flames leaping from a solidly established fire, flames +curling out of the lambent craters of a deep centre; and steadily look +into that. After a while your hand goes out slowly for the book. It has +become acceptable. You have got your thoughts home. They were of no use +in France, dwelling upon those villages and cross-roads you once knew, +now spouting smoke and flames, where good friends are waiting, having +had their last look on earth, as the doomed rearguards. + +The best books for refuge in times of stress are of the "notebook" and +"table-talk" kind. Poetry I have tried, but could not approach it. It +is too distant. Romance, which many found good, would never hold my +attention. But I had Samuel Butler's _Note Books_ with me for two years +in France, and found that the right sort of thing. You may begin +anywhere. There are no threads to look for. And you may stop for a +time, while some strange notion of the author's is in contest for the +command of the intelligence with your dark, resurgent thoughts; but +Butler always won. His mental activity is too fibrous, masculine, and +unexpected for any nonsense. But I had to keep a sharp eye on Butler. +His singular merits were discovered by others who had no more than +heard of him, but found he was exactly what they wanted. If his volume +of _Note Books_ is not the best example of its sort we have, then I +should be glad to learn the name of the best. This Lent I tried +Coleridge again. But surely one's mind must be curiously at random to +go to such woolgathering. I found him what I fear Lamb and his friends +knew him to be--a tireless and heavy preacher through the murk of whose +nebulous scholarship and philosophy the revealing gleams of wisdom are +so rare that you are almost too weary to open the eyes to them when +they flash. Selden is better, but abstract, legal, and dry. + +Hazlitt compelled a renewal of an old respect; his humanity, his +instinct for essentials, his cool detection of pretence and cant, +however finely disguised, and his English with its frank love for the +embodying noun and the active verb, make reading very like the clear, +hard, bright, vigorous weather of the downs when the wind is +up-Channel. It is bracing. But I discovered another notebook, of which +I have heard so little that it shows what good things may be lost in +war; for this book was published in 1914. It is the _Impressions and +Comments_ of Havelock Ellis. There have been in the past critics of +life and the things men do who have been observers as acute, as +well-equipped in knowledge, and have had a command of English as free +and accurate, as the author of "Impressions and Comments"; but not +many. Yet such judgments of men, their affairs and their circumstances, +could have been written in no other time than the years just before the +war--the first note is dated July, 1912. The reflections are often +chill and exposed; but so is a faithful mirror bleak, though polished +and gleaming, when held up to grey affairs in the light of a day which +is ominous. You seem to feel in this book the cold draught moving +before the storm which has not come--the author knew of no storm to +come, and does not even hint at it; but the portents, and the look of +the minds of his fellows, make him feel uncomfortable, and he asks what +ails us. Now we know. It is strange that a book so wise and enlivening, +whether it is picturing the Cornish coast in spring, the weakness of +peace propaganda, Bianca Stella, Rabelais, the Rules of Art, the Bayeux +Tapestry, or Spanish cathedrals, should have been mislaid and +forgotten.... + +The fire is dying. It is grey, fallen, and cold. The house is late and +silent. There is no sound but the ghostly creaking of a stair; our +thoughts are stealing away again. We creep out after them to the outer +gate. What are books and opinions? The creakings of an old house uneasy +with the heavy remembrances and the melancholy of antiquity, and with +some midnight presage of its finality. + +The wind and rain have passed. There is now but the icy stillness and +quiet of outer space. The earth is Limbo, the penumbra of a dark and +partial recollection; the shadow, vague and dawnless, over a vast stage +from which the consequential pageant has gone, and is almost forgotten, +the memory of many events merged now into formless night itself, and +foundered profoundly beneath the glacial brilliance of a clear heaven +alive with stars. Only the stars live, and only the stars overlook the +place that was ours. The war--was there a war? It must have been long +ago. Perhaps the shades are troubled with vestiges of an old and +dreadful sin. If once there were men who heard certain words and became +spellbound, and in the impulse of that madness forgot that their earth +was good, but very brief, and turned from their children and women and +the cherished work of their hands to slay each other and destroy their +communities, it all happened just as the leaves of an autumn that is +gone once fell before the sudden mania of a wind, and are resolved. +What year was that? The leaves of an autumn that is long past are +beyond time. The night is their place, and only the unknowing stars +look down to the little blot of midnight which was us, and our pride, +and our wisdom, and our heroics. + +_April 1918._ + + +THE END + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Junk, by H. M. 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