Chapter III: Part 3

“Ah—you see I’m not done for yet. There’s many an old fellow of eighty can’t get along without two sticks to help him.”

One day, too, this summer, I found him working with a bill-hook in his garden. The grass had grown up high under the quick-set hedge on one of the paths. He was clearing it all away.

“Must keep the little place tidy, sir,” he said, with a bright twinkle in his eye. “They grasses do grow up so quick there’d be no seeing the path at all.” Then with little suppressed grunts of his breath to every swing of the bill-hook, he went on steadily with his work, leaning heavily upon number one with the other hand.

Rather strenuous labour you would think for an old man of eighty to be doing. But as he worked, I saw that all the stems of the grass had been cut for him beforehand with a scythe. He was only sweeping it together into heaps with the aid of a bill-hook. So long as it was a bill-hook it seemed man’s labour to him.

I try sometimes to find out what he thinks about life and its swiftly approaching end. But he is very reticent to speak of it—so unlike our little serving-maid, who takes her evenings out alone, and when I asked her why she did not prefer company, replied—

“I like to think, sir.”

“What of?” said I.

“Of life and the night,” said she.

But if he thinks of life and the night, as indeed I am sure he must, he tells his thoughts to no one. It was only once, when I was praising the scent and the show of his glorious wall-flowers, that he said to me—

“I like to think they’re the best this year that I’ve ever had. I grow them all from our own seed, sir. I save it up myself every year. And I like to think this year that they’re the very best, because you know, sir, I may not see them again.”

I tried to imagine what would be the state of my own mind, if I thought I should never see wall-flowers again. I wondered could I say it with such courage, such resignation as he.

To never see wall-flowers again! It seems in a nonsensical, childish way to me to sum up the whole tragedy—if tragedy there really be—in Death. It seems, moreover, to give just that little stroke of the brush, that little line of the pen in completion of this thumb-nail portrait of mine. An old man in an old garden that he loves, telling himself that his wall-flowers are the best that year of all—telling himself bravely night after night when he goes to bed, morning after morning when he rises to the new day—which is one more day nearer the end—telling himself that they are the best this year of all, because he may not see them any more.

To never see wall-flowers again!

XV

AN OLD STRING BONNET

XV

AN OLD STRING BONNET

I care not what it is, so long as it be old; but if an object has passed through other hands than mine, it gathers an indefinable charm about it. Old china, old cups and saucers, whether they be ugly or beautiful, are priceless by reason of that faint murmuring of other lives which clings around them. In the mere tinkling of the china as it is brought in upon the tray, I can hear a thousand conversations and gossipings coming dimly to my ears out of the wealth of years which is heaped upon them.

For this reason would I always use the old china which it is my good fortune to possess. A breakfast-table, a tea-table spread with china which can tell you nothing than that it has but lately come from the grimy potteries, makes poor company to sit down with. Yet let it be but Spode, or Worcester, or Lowestoft, and every silence that falls upon you is filled with the whisperings of these priceless companions.

I have no sympathy with the collector who locks his china away because it is rare and worth so much in pounds and shillings and pence. He is no more than a gaoler, incarcerating in an eternal prison the very best friends he has, and just, if you please, because they are his.

What if there is the risk of their being broken! A rivet here, a rivet there will make them speak again. I have a Spode milk-jug with forty-five rivets in it and it is more eloquent to me than all the modern china you could find, however perfect it may be. In fact, I would sooner have a piece that has been mended. It shows that in those long-ago days, where all romance lies hiding for us now, it shows that they cared for their treasures and would not let them be discarded because they happened upon evil times. I have also an old blue and white tea-pot with a silver spout. A dealer sniffed at it the other day.

“May have been good once,” said he.

“’Tis better now,” said I. “So would you and I be if we’d been through the wars.”

“Do you mean to say you’d prefer me with a wooden arm?” he asked.

“I would,” said I. “You’d be a better man. You couldn’t grasp so much.”

But the other day I found a treasure. Miss B——, the old spinster lady in whose farm I have my little dwelling, is by way of being the reincarnation of a jackdaw. She has cupboards and chests in every room in which lie hidden a thousand old things which have been in her family for years. Yesterday, in turning out an old drawer, I came across a quaint little contrivance that looked like a string bag, only it was beautifully made in three parts, all composed of a wonderful lace-work of fine string and knitted together, each one by a delicate stitching of white horsehair.

I brought it out into the kitchen, tenderly in my hand.

“Whatever is this?” I asked.

She took it in her fingers and looked at it for a moment, then, inconsequently, she laid it down upon the kitchen table.

“That—” said she, “that was my great, great grandmother’s bonnet. She wore it up till the time she died.”

“Why, it’s nearly two hundred years old!” I exclaimed.

“If it’s a day,” said she.

I gazed at it for some moments. Then suddenly it seemed to move, to raise itself from the table. Another instant and it was spread out, decked with a tiny piece of pink ribbon, on the head of an old lady—but oh, so old! Her silvery white hair thrust out in little curls and coils through the mesh of the string, and there she was, with a great broad skirt and big puff sleeves bobbing me a curtsey before my very eyes.

I turned to Miss B——

“Do you see?” I asked.

“See what?” said she.

“Your great, great grandmother.”

“I never saw her in my life,” she replied.

“But under the string bonnet!” I exclaimed.

“Goodness! That ’ud fall to pieces if any one tried to put it on now. It’s no good to me. You can have it if you like.”

Then I understood why she could not see her great, great grandmother, and, with a feeling of compassion for her loneliness, I took the old lady into my arms. Miss B—— went to the sink to peel some potatoes.

“You’re perfectly beautiful,” I whispered, and her old face wrinkled all over with smiles.

“They used to tell me that when I was a girl,” said she.

“You’re more beautiful now,” said I.

“What’s that you’re saying?” asked Miss B—— over her shoulder.

“What I should have said,” said I, “if I’d lived two hundred years ago.”

XVI

THE NEW MALADY

XVI

THE NEW MALADY

In every age there is a new disease—there is a new malady—a strange sickness. The whole army of medical science goes out to meet it and there is pitched a battle wherein lives are sacrificed, honour made and lost. But in the end the glorious banner of medical skill is generally carried triumphant from the field. Some old foes truly there are who are not conquered yet, with whom a guerilla warfare is continuously being waged. Never can they be brought into the open field; never can they be come upon at close quarters. Sometimes in a skirmish they are routed and put to flight; yet ever they return, lessened in numbers, no doubt, weakened in strength, but still a marauding enemy to mankind.

Then apart from these, there is that new malady, which, with its stern inevitability, the age always brings amidst its retinue of civilisation.

It would seem, notwithstanding the dictum of the Bab Ballad-maker, that they are not always blessings which follow in Civilisation’s train. One disease after another has come amongst us from out the ranks of civilisation. And now appears the latest of all, seizing upon its victims under the very walls of that fortress of medical science.

It is the disease of bearing children, the disease of making life.

We all know how science with its anæsthetics, with its deftly made instruments and its consummate skill, is attacking the enemy from every quarter. Yet the fatality of the sickness is steadily growing. More women die in childbirth now than ever fell its victims in the days when the services of a common mid-wife were all that were at their disposal.

It is terrible sometimes to think how rapidly this most natural of all functions—since upon it hangs the existence of all people in the world—it is terrible to think how rapidly it is shaping into the awesome features of a disease. Women are as ashamed of its conditions now as they would be if smallpox had pitted their delicate skins. They speak of it as of some dreadful operation—which indeed it has become—and, instead of glorying over a possession which they alone command, they will talk of it as a curse which, suffering alone, they should be given compensation for. They ask for the vote! Great God! As if the vote could compensate them for the loss of bearing children as the God of nature meant they should be borne! As if any form of compensation could ease such a loss as that!

Success and civilisation—these are the two subtle poisons from the effects of which we are all suffering. Nothing fails like success! Nothing degrades so much as civilisation!

A little while ago a woman who had given birth to a fine child told me quite frankly that she herself was not going to feed it.

“Do you mean suckle it?” said I.

She did not like that word and she shuddered.

“You object to the use of the word?” I suggested.

“Is it _quite_ nice?” she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Words are only ugly,” said I, “when they express ugly deeds. I can understand if you find the deed ugly you don’t like the word.”

She answered that she did not mind the thing itself. “You see,” said she, “it’s quite impossible for me to do it. We’ve been asked up—my husband and I—to Chatsworth to meet the King, and it would be foolish to lose such an opportunity—wouldn’t it? I can’t go up like this, so I must have a sort of operation.”

“So you’ve made up your mind?” said I.

She screwed up her eyes as her conscience faltered in her breast.

“Practically,” she replied.

“Well, if not quite,” I suggested, “write to the King, and ask him whether he would sooner meet you at Chatsworth or have a stalwart son given to the country.”

She told me I made the most absurd remarks she had ever heard from any one and she walked away. “Besides,” said she, over her shoulder, “it’s a daughter.”

I found her name amongst those invited to Chatsworth to meet the King. I saw her picture in a photograph of the Chatsworth group and she looked beautiful. Her figure was that of a child who had never known maternity.

There are traitors even in the camp of medical science, thought I. Nothing degrades science so much as the march of civilisation—no social woman fails so utterly as when she succeeds in meeting the King.

I have a friend, in the tiny chintz parlour of whose cottage in the country a certain collection of prints adorn the walls. For the most part they are steel engravings, valuable enough in their way. But it is the subject common to them all, rather than the intrinsic value of each picture, which has persuaded my friend to their collection. One and all, with the tenderest treatment you can imagine, they portray a baby feeding at the gentle breast of its mother. No other pictures in the room are there but these, and there must at least be a fair dozen of them. You cannot fail but notice them. The similarity of their subject alone would force itself upon your mind.

Yet, would you believe it, the ladies who come there to call upon my friend’s wife, regard them with horror and alarm. As their eyes fall upon them, they turn sharply away, only to be met with yet another of those improper pictures upon an opposite wall. With far greater equanimity and even interest would they look upon a series of Hogarth’s prints. The vicar of the parish, too, was alarmed. He asked my friend whether he did not think that such pictures did harm.

“Of course I know,” said he, “it is a natural function and is all right in its proper place. I don’t mean to say that it would do harm to you or to me, of course—we’re old enough to discriminate. But younger people are apt to look at these things in a different light.”

“Do you know that as a fact?” asked my friend quietly.

Now, the vicar was a truthful man, who had read that the devil is the father of all liars. He held his head thoughtfully for a moment.

“It is what I imagine would be the case,” said he. “On which account I always disapprove of those pictures which, what you might say, expose the body of a woman in the so-called interests of Art. With a man and his wife—if I may say so—such things are different; but to make a show of a woman’s nakedness, that is to me a form of prostitution at which honestly I shudder every time it comes my way.”

“I see—I see your point,” said my friend. “If there is to be prostitution, let it be that of the wife. I see your point. But why call marriage a sacrament? And why solemnise it in a church? I should have thought the meat-market had been a better place.”

Great heavens! No wonder the disease is spreading! No wonder is it that women approach the hour of deliverance in fear and trembling, for neither do they fit themselves for it, nor are they proud of the birthright which is theirs alone. For the sake of appearances, because they are not well enough off, because of inconvenience, they will give up all they possess for the mess of pottage. Civilisation indeed has made a strange place of the world. There are few men and women left in it now.

Now and again you may run across a true mother, but all the rest of women that you meet are only fit to be called by a name that is indeed too ugly to write.

A true woman I heard of only the other day. She was brought to her bed of childbirth. In the room there was that still hush, the hush of awe when out of the “nowhere into here” the something which is life is about to be conjured out of the void of nothingness which is death. For long, trembling moments all was still. The faint whispers and muffled sounds only made the quietness yet more potent. And then, suddenly, out of the silence, came the shrill living, trumpet-cry of a new voice—the voice of a little child.

The woman stretched her arms and smiled, as if in that cry she had heard the voice of God.

“You must lie still,” they whispered in her ear—“there is yet another child.”

“Thank God!” she moaned, and the silence fell round them once more.

XVII

BELLWATTLE AND THE DIGNITY OF MEN

XVII

BELLWATTLE AND THE DIGNITY OF MEN

We were all sitting out in the garden having tea under the nut trees—Bellwattle, Cruikshank and I. They use the old Spode tea-service—apple green and gold and black—whenever tea is taken out of doors, and I would give anything to describe to you the pictures that rise in my mind with the sight of that quaint old tea-service, the smell of the sweetbriars and the scent of the stocks. They are indescribable, those pictures. No one will ever paint them to my satisfaction, neither with colours nor with words. They are composed with such historical accuracy, are so redolent of their time, that it would need somebody with a memory reaching over one hundred and fifty years to trace them as they appear to me. Now, if my memory reaches over five minutes it is doing well—and many there are the same as I.

The characters I see are arrayed in costumes so befitting to their period, they speak of things so faithful to their day, that no man, unless he had lived in the eighteenth century, could possibly reproduce them. I see their dainty costumes—I hear their quaint speech, but not one jot or one tittle of it all could I put down upon paper. Yet I know those pictures are true as true can be.

Why is this? Is there a memory within us which harks back to lives we have lived before? Is it by the same reason we feel that certain incidents have come to us again out of the far-off past? I was pondering over it all that afternoon, when suddenly Bellwattle broke the silence which surrounded us.

“Why were elephants called elephants?” she asked.

Cruikshank—of whom, if it cannot be said that he knows the woman in his wife, at least knows her queer little habits—passed his cup without amazement for more tea. But I—well, it took my breath away.

“Whatever made you ask that?” I inquired.

She shrugged her shoulders as eloquently as she could, being occupied with Cruikshank’s third cup of tea.

“I don’t know,” she replied—“Who called them elephants, anyhow?”

To this second question, Cruikshank was as ready as if he were at Sunday school.

“Adam,” said he. “Adam named all the beasts and he called them elephants.”

“But why elephants?” asked Bellwattle.

Cruikshank looked at me across the little garden table. There was an appeal in his eyes, as though he would say, “Go on—I’ve answered mine. It’s your turn now. Don’t let her think we don’t know.”

For you must understand that, in their dealings with women, there is a certain freemasonry amongst men. If by nature their sex is debarred from the greatest of all functions, they must at least steal dignity by the assumption of great wisdom. No man may ever admit ignorance to a woman. So long as her questions have nothing to do with instinct, he will answer them, whether or no he tells her the greatest balderdash you ever heard. All men in their vows of masonry must swear to do this. We should be in a sorry way if women did not look up to us for knowledge.

When then I received this secret sign from Cruikshank, I did the best thing I could for the sex—I answered at a hazard.

“He called it an elephant,” said I, “because the impression he received of its size may have suggested that word to his mind. He may for example have been trodden upon by one of those huge brutes—in which case,” said I, “the impression would have been a vivid one.”

“If one of them trod on me, it wouldn’t suggest the word elephant,” said Bellwattle. “I should think of squash.”

“Probably you would,” said Cruikshank; “but then you’re not Adam.” By which I think he meant to convey the mental superiority of his sex.

Therefore—“She might be Eve,” said I.

Bellwattle closed one eye and looked at me.

I met her gaze steadily and then, as suddenly, she put another question to us.

“Did Adam name everything?”

“Every single thing,” said Cruikshank.

“All the insects?”

“Every blessed one.”

“Why did he call it Daddy Long Legs, then?”

Cruikshank seized the opportunity.

“That was what its long legs suggested to him.”

“But why Daddy?” said Bellwattle very quickly.

Cruikshank dipped into his third cup of tea, drowning all possible answer.

“Why Daddy?” she repeated.

“Because,” said I, “Adam was the father of all living.”

For the moment Cruikshank forgot his table manners and choked. It took a great deal of serious assurance on our part then to convince Bellwattle that we were in earnest. For we were in earnest. No man is so serious, or so put upon his mettle as when a woman bows to him for knowledge. There comes that look into his face as well I remember would creep into the face of the master when I was at school. No doubt it is the same now. The vanity of men does not alter in ten years, or in ten thousand for that matter.

I can see now the German master—that is to say the stolid Englishman who taught us German—I can see him now reading out a sentence for us to translate into the language.

“My heart,” read he, most solemnly, “my heart is in the Highlands—my heart is not here.”

And there was such pathos, such a tone of exile in his voice, that I was prompted to ask him whether, under the circumstances, he could give his proper attention to the class.

“Might we not shut up our books,” said I—“straight away?”

The look that came into his face then was the look—exaggerated a little perhaps—which comes into the faces of most men when the dignity of their great wisdom is upset. Cruikshank and I, then, were struggling for our dignity against the fire of Bellwattle’s questions. It was no good talking about the evolution of language to her. She would never have understood a word of it. Now, when a man tells a woman anything which she does not understand, she is just as likely to think him a consummate fool. And a man will always be a fool rather than be thought one.

We were trying, therefore, to answer Bellwattle as she would have answered herself. In other words, we were making fools of ourselves in order that Bellwattle should think us wise.

It was here that Cruikshank tempted providence. Doubtless he thought we were getting on so well that we could afford to be generous with our information, for in quite an uncalled-for way he volunteered to tell her more.

“Is there anything else,” said he, “that you want to know?”

She nodded her head and around the corners of her lips I believe I caught the suspicion of a smile.

“If Adam called it a cow,” she began——

“He did,” interrupted Cruikshank. “In those days it probably made that sort of noise.”

“Then why,” said Bellwattle, giving him never a moment to retract, “why do they call it a _vache_ in France?”

We all looked at each other—I at Cruikshank, Cruikshank at me, and Bellwattle alternately at both of us.

After a pregnant pause, Cruikshank began to temporise.

“That’s very like a woman,” said he—“you’re going into another issue altogether.”

“Now,” said I, “you’re coming to Bible history.”

“Yes, that’s Bible history,” repeated Cruikshank, “you’re going back to the Tower of Babel.”

“Is that where they wanted to get up to Heaven?” she asked.

We nodded our heads emphatically.

“And it all smashed up, and they began talking like a crowd of tourists?”

“Something like that,” we agreed.

“Then, don’t you see,” went on Cruikshank, finding his feet once more. “Then they all separated, went into different countries, and when they saw a cow in France they called it _vache_—it’s quite simple.”

“Oh, yes, I see that part of it,” said Bellwattle. You have only to say to a woman—and moreover be it in the proper tone of voice—that a thing is quite simple and she will see it through and through. I have known Bellwattle understand a proposition of Euclid by telling her it was quite simple.

As I say, “If that point is the centre of this circle, all lines drawn from that point to the circumference must be equal; that’s quite simple, isn’t it?”

And she has replied, “Oh—quite—I see that—but who says it’s the centre?”

If I say Euclid, she then asks me if I believe everything which people tell me.

In this manner she saw Cruikshank’s point about the people in France calling a cow _vache_. But after seeing it, she was silent for a long time. She was giving it due consideration. I knew that another question was to come. At last she looked up.

“But can you explain,” said she, “how they happened to hit upon the same animal? I know _vache_ means cow, but how did the people in France know that it should be that particular animal that they were to call _vache_? They might have called a pig _vache_, and then we should all have been topsy-turvy.”

I ran my fingers through my hair.

“My God!” said I——

“It’s no good swearing,” said Bellwattle, “I can see you don’t know.”

XVIII

THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED

XVIII

THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED

It comes back into my mind now, as an echo that is lost among the hills, that night in Ardmore in Ireland, that night when they heard the Pope was dead. I can hear the low, deep note of the sea, monotonous and even as the beating of a heavy drum when the waves rolled up the boat cove, or leapt upon the rocks that crouch to meet the sea beneath the Holy Well. I can see the clouds, great banks of grey, as though a furnace were smouldering below the horizon, I can see them hanging in sullen wet masses, hanging low over the white crests that were breaking away by Helvic Head. I can see the dank, dark coils of seaweed lying, like the hair of women that are drowned, along the dim curved line of the strand. And around the first head, where the bay spreads wide into the great Atlantic, the sound of a rushing wind, muted by the hills, dimly reaches my ears.

It seems fitting that when any great catastrophe falls upon the trembling little people of this world there should be sounded an ominous note—a discord struck upon that great orchestra of the elements. It is the only true accompaniment to the sorrows of mankind, when the thunder bursts, the lightning rends the raiment of the sky and the winds play wildly on their shrillest instruments.

There was no thunder, no lightning that night, but all across the bay and round the headlands you might have felt the despairing sense of foreboding, the heavy hour before a storm, when the very ground seems angry beneath your feet.

Such was the night in Ardmore when they heard the Pope was dead.

In one moment the whole Roman Catholic world had been robbed of its father; the great Church of Christ was without its head on earth. From that moment and for the anxious days to come they were as orphans, knowing not where to turn. The Pope was dead. But there was none to cry in the market-place, there was none to stand upon the chapel steps and shout, “Long live the Pope!”

The Pope was dead. There was no Pope.

You must have seen the silent, questioning faces to have known what such a loss could mean. Around the counters in the public-houses the fishermen sat, afraid to drink. The women crept into their cottages and shut the doors. Presently little flickers of light glowed from each window—candle flames trembling as the draughts of wind caught their feeble glow.

It was as though the spirit of that old aristocrat, with his death-like head and piercing eyes, were making its way to Heaven through the little street of Ardmore, and these few feeble glimmers were set out, tiny beacons, to point his road.

For an hour they were burning before there came from the village courthouse the sounds of instruments being blown, all those weird, unearthly noises which tell you that a village band is about to play.

In ten minutes they were ready—the public-houses were empty. In ten minutes they were putting their instruments to their lips; their cheeks were swelling with the first ready breath to start. A little crowd of boys and girls were surrounding them ready to march by their sides; and then, with a one—two—three, they began. The little solemn, serious crowd strode forth.

Up by the post-office they went, round by the Protestant Church, along down Coffee Lane to where stands the seawall hung with its festoons of red-brown nets. Then through the main street they marched and round again the same route as before.

And ever as they marched, like the band of an army playing the death march at the funeral of their chief, they played the same grim tune—the grimmest tune at such a time I think I have ever heard—“Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you.” It was the only tune they knew.

After the second round of their journey, the playing ceased while the players gained their breath. In silence then, they tramped over the same ground, the little crowd, eager for the music again, still following at their heels.

When they reached the top of Coffee Lane once more, where the road runs up to meet the Holy Well and wanders from there in a thin straggling path around the wild cliff-heads, there came an elderly woman and a child out of the darkness.

Seven miles they had walked around that dangerous path from the little fishing hamlet of Whiting Bay—seven miles over a way where a goat must choose its steps, where at moments the sheer cliff rushes down four hundred feet to meet the sea—seven miles in that chill darkness with never a lantern’s light to guide their feet—seven miles with hearts throbbing, hope rising and falling, whispering a word to each other now and then, always straining on—seven miles just to learn the truth.

As they came out of the shadows, the woman stopped. The clarionet-player was wetting his lips, fitting his fingers with infinite care upon the notes of his instrument. She caught his arm before he could raise it to his mouth.

“What is ut?” she asked.

“Shure, the Pope’s dead,” he whispered back.

And then, with its one—two—three once more, the band struck up again. The woman and the child stood there silently under a cottage window, the light of the burning candle within making pin-points in their eyes, while in their ears echoed and re-echoed the words, “The Pope is dead,” mingling with the refrain, “Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you.”

XIX

ART

XIX

ART

It was explained to me the other day, the meaning of this elusive little word of three letters. All my pre-conceived opinions were dashed to the ground and, in the space of half an hour, I was taught the modern appreciation of the meaning of that word—Art.

It chanced I wanted a copy of that picture by Furze, “Diana of the Uplands”—Furze whom the gods loved or envied, I don’t know which. I wanted a copy of it to hang in my bedroom in a little farmhouse in the country. I wanted to hang it near my bed so that when I woke of a morning, I could start straight away across the Uplands, feeling the generous give of the heather beneath my feet, tasting the freshening draught of wind in my nostrils, taking into my limbs the energy of those hounds ever ready to strain away from their leash and leave their mistress a speck upon a dim horizon.

It chanced that I wanted all that—which is not a little. But these are the real good things of life which are so seldom bought because they are so cheap. A small print-seller’s in Regent Street was good enough for me.

I walked in. On the threshold I was met by a little serving-maid with a chubby red face and a brand-new green apron.

“Yes?” said she.

It opened the conversation excellently.

“I want a coloured print of ‘Diana of the Uplands,’” said I.

She hurried to a portfolio and began turning over coloured prints at an incredible speed. Before she had found it, she looked up.

“Will you have it plain?” she asked, “or with a B.A.M.?”

“A B.A.M.?” said I. I could not describe to you the effect of those three mysterious letters. It sounded almost improper. “You ought not to say things like that to me,” I continued solemnly. “Supposing I said that you were a V.P.G.”

She became at a loss between confusion and amusement.

“I forgot,” she said, apologetically. “I’m new here, and that’s what we call them. It means British Art Mount.”

At that moment there came another serving-maid in a green apron.

“What is it you want, sir?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m being attended to, thank you,” I replied.

“Yes, but this young lady’s new to the shop,” she said; “she’s not quite used to serving yet.”

“She’s doing very well indeed,” said I. “She’s already nearly persuaded me to buy a thing I don’t want—a thing I don’t even know the meaning of.”

The little girl with the chubby cheeks wriggled her shoulders with delight.

“I asked him if he wanted a B.A.M.,” she explained.

The other looked quite shocked.

“You know I’ve told you not to say that,” she said. “You’d better go up to Miss Nelson, she wants you upstairs.”

The little maid departed. I was left with her more elderly and more experienced sister in trade. In a moment she had discovered the picture in question and had laid it out for my approval. I did approve; and then she asked me if I wanted it framed.

“If you do framing here, I shall be very glad,” said I.

“Then what sort of frame would you like?” she asked.

I hesitated. I was trying to see it in my mind’s eye on that bedroom wall; see it when the sun was pouring in through the open window; when the rain was pattering against the panes, and the sky was grey. Therefore, while I made up my mind—just, perhaps, to conceal from her the fact that I could be in doubt about such a matter—I asked her what she would suggest.

She drew herself up, conscious of the state of importance which she had attained with my question.

“Well,” she said, and her head hung thoughtfully on one side—“that depends on what room it’s for. Is it for the dining-room or the drawing-room?”

Now what possessed me, I do not know; but when I thought of that little farmhouse in the valley between the Uplands, the words dining-room and drawing-room sounded ridiculous. There is just a sitting-room—and a small sitting-room—that is all. This dining-room and drawing-room seemed nonsensical, and what with one thing and another it put me in a nonsensical mood.

“’Tis for the cook’s bedroom,” said I.

If only you had seen her face! It fell like a stone over a cliff and, what is more, it never seemed to reach the bottom of that expression of bewilderment.

“Oh,” she replied—“I see. Well, then, I’m sure I couldn’t advise you. Tastes differ—don’t they?”

“So I’ve heard,” said I. “But I wish you would advise me, all the same. I’m quite ignorant about these things. I’m only a farmer. I’ve just come up to London for the day and I’ve been given this commission for—well, she’s more than the cook—she’s the housekeeper. She didn’t tell me anything about the frame. What frame would you suggest? I thought a nice rosewood one; but you know much better about these sort of things than I do.”

“A rosewood one won’t be bad,” said she, in a quaint little tone of voice that gently patronised me. “A rosewood one’ll do,” she repeated; “but it’s not Art.”

That phrase had an electrical sound to me; and when I say electrical, I mean, beside the shock of it, something which neither you nor I nor any of us understand.

“Why isn’t it Art?” I asked quickly. “You mustn’t think me foolish,” I added, “but really I suppose I’m what you call a country bumpkin; I know nothing about these things. Why isn’t it Art?”

“Just——it isn’t,” she replied, and she took down a sample of black moulding and a sample of gold; then she laid a sample of rosewood on one side of the picture. “There,” she said, “that’s your cook’s taste.” She did not quite like to call it mine. Then she laid the other two samples on the other sides of the print—“and that’s Art.”

I looked at the picture, then I looked at her. Then I looked back at the picture again.

“But how do you know it’s Art?” said I.

She pulled herself up still straighter and she answered, with all the confidence in the world—

“Because I’ve been taught—that’s why. Because I’ve been educated to it. I haven’t spent five years here amongst all these pictures without learning what’s Art and what isn’t.”

“And now you know?” said I.

She nodded her head heavily with wisdom.

“But are you sure you’ve been taught right?” I went on. “How are you to know that the people who taught you knew?”

“’Cos they’ve been in the business all their lives,” she replied. “’Cos they’ve found out what the public like and they give it to them. It’s like one person learning music on a grand piano and another learning music on a cheap cottage piano. Do you mean to tell me that the one as learns on the grand piano isn’t going to be a better musician than the one as learns on the cottage?”

“It’s more likely that they’d be a better judge of pianos,” said I.

She told me I was talking silly and which frame would I have.

“I’m trying not to talk silly,” I assured her. “I mean every word I say, only I haven’t been educated as you have. You must remember that, and make allowances. I only said that about the piano because I knew a lady who had a satinwood Blüthner grand piano, and she never played on it from one day to another, so that she did not even know what a good piano was, and much less did she know about music.”

“I wish she’d give it to me,” said the little serving-maid.

“I wish she would,” said I; “then perhaps you’d admit that there was something in what I said, after all. But, joking aside, if you’ve been taught what is Art and what isn’t, couldn’t you teach me? I love the country. I think the fields of corn that grow up on my land every year are beautiful. And when I see them getting ripe and being gathered, then going out to feed the whole world—you here in the cities, who don’t know the gold of a ripening field of corn—every single one of you, all fed from those wonderful fields that have waves like the sea when the winds blow across them—things like that I know about—things like that I appreciate.”

“Oh—well—that’s Nature,” said she. “We were talking about Art. Art’s holdin’ the mirror up to Nature—see.”

“Then what’s the matter with the mirror?” I asked.

“What mirror?”

“The mirror of Art?”

“Why there’s nothing the matter with it.”

“Well—I don’t know,” said I, “but it seems to me as if so many people have been taught to look into it, that it has become dulled with their breath and won’t reflect anything now.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“I don’t believe I know myself,” I replied. “I haven’t been taught like you have.”

“Well—which frame would you like?” she asked a little testily.

“I’m afraid my housekeeper’ll be annoyed if I don’t take the rosewood one,” said I.

XX

THE VALUE OF IDLENESS

XX

THE VALUE OF IDLENESS

“If you want to be quiet,” said my friend, “you had better go and sit up in the old mill.”

I acquiesced at once.

“Just give me a table and a chair,” said I. “I shall be quite comfortable.”

“Are you going to write?” he asked.

I nodded my head.

“What?”

“An essay.”

“On what?”

“The Value of Idleness.”

“You’ll do that well,” said he, and he told the gardener to take up to the mill all that I required.

So here am I, writing the Value of Idleness in the little oak-beamed loft of an old mill.

To do nothing is to be receptive of everything. Idleness of the body alone will serve you not at all. It is only when the mind—but to follow the mood, to understand the drift of this philosophy of idleness, you must see, as I see it, this old white mill in which I sit and write.

Last night, as we walked out in the garden, the moon was in her chariot, whirling in a mad race through the heavens. In and out of a thousand clouds she rode recklessly.

She carries news, thought I, and were she the daughter of Nimshi, she could not drive more furiously.

And there, under her shifting light, with great arms raised appealingly into the wind, stood the old wind-mill, just at the end of the little red-brick path which runs through an avenue of gnarled apple trees.

I touched my friend’s arm and pointed.

“She’s very beautiful,” said I.

“She’s very old,” said he.

Then I suddenly saw in her the figure of a patient woman, who has given up her youth, appealing with passionate arms to God to grant her rest. Another moment and there came a faint moaning sigh falling upon my ears—a sigh like the fluttering of an autumn leaf that eddies slowly to the ground.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The wind-mill,” said my friend. “She’s crying to be set free, to have her arms unloosed.”

As he said that, I saw her as a tired woman no longer. She became majestic in her agony then. So it seemed to me must the women in Siberia cry at night with faces turned, and hands stretched forth towards their native Russia.

“How long has she been idle?” I inquired.

“Oh—many, many years,” said he.

It was this which made me think of writing the Value of Idleness. So here am I, writing my essay on Idleness in the little oak-beamed loft of an old mill.

You cannot think how silent it is. I feel away and above the world. From the wee square window between the beams I can see the miller’s cottage with its broad sloping roof of old red tiles, leaning down until it nearly touches the ground. But beyond that, on one side, stretches the whole weald of Kent and, on the other, lie the Romney marshes spreading forth to meet the sea. And there is the sea—that faint, far margin of blue—a chaplet upon the smooth, broad forehead of the world.

Yet silent and still as it all is, I can nevertheless hear voices. Upon the great oak shaft, the tireless vertebra of this goddess of the wind, there are two initials carved by some patient hand. L.B. are the letters cut, and following them comes the date—1790. There is a voice to be heard from that, if you do but listen well. I can see one of those young millers who, when never a leaf was rustling on the trees and the air was still in a breathless calm, I can see him sitting there in a moment of idleness, carving out his initials and the date in deep, bold characters. Then saying aloud to himself, “Maybe there’ll be some as’ll read that in a hundred years, and wonder who be I.”

I can hear the incisions of his knife as he cut into the stern hard oak, the little silences, the little grunts of his breath as he laboured over each letter. No—for all its stillness, there are voices in this old mill. Up the oak ladder that leads through the ceiling to another floor I can just see the great heavy wheel that turned the shaft. It is grey even now with the dust of flour and, as its sharp teeth gleam down at me out of the darkness, the echoes of those rumbling sounds when the wind was high and the sails were racing round, comes faintly to my ears like thunder afar off.

So here am I, in the midst of these silent voices of the mill—here am I, writing an essay on the Value of Idleness.

“Idleness of the body,” I had begun, “will serve you not at all. It is only when the mind is yielding to the drug of laziness as well, that your ears are attuned to the silent voices and you can speak——”

What was that?

A sudden clatter, a beating of sudden wings around my head!

Only a bat. I watch it as it circles round the old loft. The evening is beginning to fall; I see the cows being driven home along the road. A soft greyness is wrapping its fine web about the world and this little creature is venturing forth from its hiding-place before the day is yet quite dead.

What a wonderful house to live in—this old, old mill! I scarcely wonder at the beauty and simplicity of the “Lettres de mon Moulin” as I sit here with the upper half of the creaking door wide open, and the far hills stretching out to sleep as the night draws round about them.

But now, as the grey light grows deeper and twilight hangs upon a frail thread ere it drops into the lap of darkness; now, as though it were a herald of the night to come, a wind springs up across the land. I hear it as its first whispers begin to tell their secrets in the corners and the crevices. Yet it whispers not for long. Soon, with a loud, insistent voice, it is crying its importunate passion to the mill. But she is chained. The fetters cling unmercifully to her arms. She cannot move. Again and again the wind envelops her in its embrace, but she makes no answer to its passion. Only now and again there comes her faint, despairing cry—the cry of a woman in pain—the cry of a woman in prison. I feel so sorely tempted to set her free, just to see her great generous arms sweeping in a joyous abandonment of life before the wind she loves so well.

And here am I, in this old, old silent mill, writing an essay on the Value of Idleness.

Night is on the verge now. The words run into one another upon the paper. It is so dark that my pen wanders from the faint ruled line and sets out on its own account across the dim grey page.

At last comes the voice of my friend far below.

“Have you finished your idleness yet?”

“It’s finished,” say I with a sense of loss of the moments that have been mine—mine and this dear, sad woman’s in prison. I bolt the doors and come down.

“Come and read it to me now,” says he.

And I read it all.

* * * * *

“But there’s nothing about idleness,” he said. “Where’s the Value of Idleness?”

“Here,” said I, and I threw the papers across to him. “It’s all Idleness. To do nothing is to be receptive of everything. I’ve been doing nothing.”

XXI

THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION

XXI

THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION

Not a few are there to applaud this spirit of competition, this modern endeavour to do things well, not because they are worth doing, but from the desire to do them better than other people.

Yet it is a canker that eats its way into the heart of everything. Bellwattle, in her happiest mood of distinction, would call it one of the laws of God. But whether it be a law of God or of Nature; whether, in fact, it be a law at all and not simply one of these fungoid growths of civilisation, it is a deceptive matter whichever way you look at it.

You would imagine, whether you were Jesuit or not, that the end would justify the means in such a question as this. You might believe that, so long as the thing were done well, it would matter little, if at all, the motive which prompted its well-doing. Yet this is just where the subtle poison of it lurks. For it is not of necessity doing a thing well, to do it better than any one else. The moment you begin to work like this, you create a false standard, lowering the value of everything you do. It is not the spirit of charity to give more than your next door neighbour. That is the spirit of competition. The spirit of charity it is to give the last penny you can spare. The widow’s mite is charity. The millionaire’s thousand is bombast.

But this confusion of terms—this confusion of motives is so growing into the language we speak that words, which once were so priceless, are become like weapons worn out and blunted. There is but little edge left to any words now. They will cut nothing.

And so this spirit of competition is a fetish to-day. We do not speak of having done a thing as well as we can do it, but of having done it better than this man or that.

“I bet you,” says the actor, “I could play that part better than the man who plays it now.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” says the politician, “that the speech I made last Friday wasn’t as good as Disraeli at his best?”

“That last book of mine,” says the writer, “was nearly as good as ‘The Old Curiosity Shop.’ I think myself that the death-scene was better in a way.”

Ah! but if we only did say these things aloud, instead of thinking them in silence. For ’tis only in silence now—as they would understand it in Ireland—that we say what we really mean.

So is it that there creeps this spirit of working by comparison into the soul and tissue of everything we do. Yet you would think, would you not, that the Church had kept herself free of it? But the Church is more eaten away with the spirit of competition than is many a humble labourer, driven to earn his living wage by making his work better than the rest.

Take this story for what it is worth; apply it as you will. It has only one meaning for me.

In Ireland, they call the wandering beggars, who live an itinerant existence, living from one town to another—they call them tinkers. A certain tinker woman, then, came into the city of Cork. Down one of the quays, seeking the scraps that fall in these places, dragging three wretched children at the frayed hem of her skirt, she was seen by a Protestant vicar.

Shifting one bare foot behind the other, she bobbed him a curtesy.

“For the love an’ honour av God, yeer riv’rance, give a poor ’ooman a copper, that the Almighty blessin’s av God may discind on ye, yeer riv’rance. Oh, sure, God Almighty give ye grace.”

The Vicar stopped.

“Where do you come from?” he asked.

“I’m after walkin’ all the ways from Macroon, yeer riv’rance—an’ I in me feet.”

She held up a bare blistered foot, at the sight of which the Vicar shudderingly closed his eyes.

“Where’s your husband?” he inquired.

“Me husband, yeer riv’rance? Shure, glory be, I haven’t had a sight or a sound av him these two years. ’Twas the day Ginnet’s circus was in Dingarvin, an’ he along wid ’em clanin’ the horses, and faith that was the last I saw av him, good or bad. I’m thinkin’ he’s gone foreign—he has indeed.”

“Why don’t you go to a priest? He’s the person to help you—not me. I’m a Protestant clergyman.”

“Shure, I know that yeer riv’rance—an’ why would I be goin’ to a preyst, an’ I wid me three little children here—the poor darlin’s—they’ve had divil a bit to eat this whole day.”

The competitive instincts of the Vicar cried aloud with a resonant voice in his ear.

“Do you mean to say they haven’t been brought up in the Roman Catholic Church?” he asked quickly.

“They have not indeed. Shure, what good would that be doin’ them?”

“Haven’t they been baptised at all into any Church?”

“They have not.”

The Vicar felt in his pocket and produced a sixpence.

“Get them something to eat,” said he, “and then come and see me. I shudder when I think they haven’t been baptised. Have you?”