Part 7
I neither made them happy nor could I teach them anything. That latter was quite proved when, on the Sunday succeeding my fourth lesson, an Archdeacon came round and examined all the classes in turn. I think I shall never get over the nightmare horror of that scrutiny when he sat in my arm-chair at the desk, and I, the trembling instructor, stood by the side while he asked my idiot flock who Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel ware, and other really elementary things. One child said that Eve was God’s wife, and I wished the earth might open and swallow me up. Then he came to the Catechism, and it really seemed as if nobody knew his own name. And it was for that nightmare that I had spent four feverish Sunday afternoons and a parody of days between, for every moment Sunday was coming nearer.
No; I give more happiness to Legs by being soundly beaten by him at golf, or by wasting (so says the Old Humbug) a morning in taking Helen up to Lord’s to see the Gentlemen and Players. Also--I hasten to forestall criticism--I like it much better myself; and though you may, if you like, call it selfish, I hereby state that to like doing anything is a very good and Christian reason for doing it. Behold the gauntlet!
For we poor folk who really cannot teach in Sunday-schools, and are not employed in making discoveries which will alleviate painful diseases, and do not serve our constituency or our King, and sneakingly throw pamphlets about the Education Bill into the fire without reading them, because we know we don’t actually care one pin what happens, and are in every single respect quite unsatisfactory and useless and unornamental, have yet, somehow (there can be no doubt of this), to add if we can to the happiness, anyhow, of those dear folk among whom our lot has been so graciously cast. We have no great gifts of any description; we are neither wise nor witty, and there has been only one talent given us, which is the power of enjoyment. Well, that is a very little one, you may say, and a very selfish one to cultivate, but if we have nothing else at all, had we not better try to make some use of that?
For the fact remains that it can be made some use of. Every one feels better for seeing one of these drones, who are neither soldiers, nor sailors, nor politicians, nor teachers, enjoy himself. Enjoyment in the air is like oxygen in the air: it quickens everybody, and in its way makes them happier. The poor drones can neither teach nor fight, nor make anybody good, but they can in their humdrum way make people a little more cheerful for a few minutes. For they have--this is what I mean by drones--a happy temperament, and as they are no good at all in any other direction, it is indeed time that they should be done to death by the workers of the hive if they do not exert themselves in the mere exercise of their temperament. And just as the drone of the hive lives immersed in the honey of his flowers and in the garnered stuff that the workers have brought home, so the drone man must continue to take active and continual pleasure in all the delightful things of this world. He must pounce on enjoyment with eager zeal, and glut himself on it till he reels with the stupefaction of pleasure; he must keep himself keen and alert for the smallest humorous or engrossing detail that is within his horizons: it is shameful if he does not go to bed every night tired with his own laughter and enjoyment. And woe to him if he invests his pleasures with the serious garb of duty! The leader of the delectable life who says that he plays golf because he finds exercise so important for his health, or who sits out all afternoon to watch other people playing other games, and explains that his doctor (his doctor, forsooth!) tells him to have plenty of fresh air, or who drinks his delicious wine and says that it is good for his digestion, is a mere scampish hypocrite. He plays games because they are such fun; he watches other people play because it amuses him; he drinks wine because it tastes so nice.
And he must never falter on his primrose path; the high gods have given him but one little talent, and all that is asked of him is that he should enjoy life enormously. He has got to do that, then. The soldier and sailor may not, perhaps, enjoy life, but they are useful in other ways. The drone is only useful in this one. He must never remit his efforts, and must never want to; he must ‘rush,’ as the Old Humbug said, all the time, for if he ceases to rush he ceases to justify his existence at all. And--a heavenly destiny, one, too, beyond all desert of his--he does, if he is at all a conscientious drone, make other people a shade more cheerfully disposed than they would otherwise have been.
This breathless dissertation on drones requires at this point, as printers say, ‘paragraphing.’ In other words, I began to talk about one thing, and without pause talked about another. It was really the fault of the Old Humbug, who said that I wasted those days in which I didn’t do something for somebody. I then justified my position on those days by pleading the desire to be a drone--a life which, as I have sketched it out, seems to me to be wholly admirable. I wish to Heaven I could be in the least like those adorable people. Misbegotten industry stands in my way, and a deep-rooted, but equally misbegotten, idea that if I am very industrious I shall one day write a good story. Also, I have not the drone temperament necessary for dronage. I am not, in fact, any longer defending myself, but extolling other people.
* * * * *
Loafers there are in plenty in this world, but personally I have no use for them. They lead the same external lives as the lover of life leads, but how different is the spirit that animates them! The loafer may have been side by side with the life-loving drone all day, at the same parties, at the same games, at the same music, but the one goes to all these things in order to get through the hours without boredom, while the other wishes the hours infinitely multiplied so that he might go to more. The one sucks enjoyment of but a stupefied sort from them; the other catches the iridescent balls and bubbles of joy that are cast like sea-spray over the tides of time, only to throw out double of what he has received. He is like some joyful juggler: a stream of objects pours into the air from his flashing hands; he catches them and hurls them into the air again, so that the eye cannot follow the procession of flying joys. And at the end, at the close of each day, he stands still for a moment, his hands full of them, his memory stored with them, eager for the next day.
How different is the loafer! Have you ever seen the chameleon feed on flies? It is just so that the loafer, who wants only to get through the hours, feeds on the simple, silly joys of life. In expression the chameleon is like a tired old gentleman with the face-ache, though the impression of face-ache is chiefly produced by cheeks swollen in other ways, for he rolls up his tongue in a ball in his mouth when he is going to feed. Then, with an expression of bored senility, he moves very cautiously to where a fly is sitting. When he is within range, he shoots out his tongue, and the fly sticks to the adhesive tip of it. There is a slight swallowing motion, and the chameleon again rolls about his greasy eye, looking for the next victim. The loafer, in a metaphysical sense, has got just such an adhesive tongue as the chameleon. He puts it out, and pleasures stick to it like postage stamps. Then he swallows them. Observe, too, when he has to make occupations for himself, how heavily, and stupidly he passes the hours! He will read the morning paper till midday, then totter out into his garden, sadly remove one weed from the path, and totter back to the house to throw it in the fire. Then he will re-read a page of his paper, and write an unnecessary note with unnecessary care, probably wiping his pen afterwards. It will then be lunch-time. How different would the drone’s morning have been! Even if he had been compelled to spend it on the platform of Clapham Junction, he would have constructed some ‘dome in air’ out of that depressing suburb. The flashing trains would have allured him (especially the boat-trains), and his mind would have gone long journeys to the sunny South. He would have built romance round the signals, and found a fairy-tale in the advertisements.
* * * * *
And what is the practical side of all this? for is it not temperament which makes the magic of these wonderful persons, and temperament is a thing which is supposed to be quite outside the power of its possessor to alter or amend?
Broadly speaking, I suppose that is true, and we who do not possess the magic would bungle terribly if we attempted to rival the flashing hands of the true conjurer. I do not suppose, at any rate, that it is worth while for the meditative recluse to spend his days and nights at festive gatherings, since he will never enjoy them himself, and, what is more important, he will, in his small way, eclipse the gaiety of those parties on which he sheds the gloom of his depressing countenance. Yet, since I believe with my whole heart that joy and simple pleasure, so long as they hurt nobody, are things wholly and entirely good, it behoves every one to look sedulously in the garden of his mind to see whether he cannot find there a few little seedlings of that species of temperament which I have tried to indicate. His garden may be the most strenuous and improving plot--a regular arboretum of high aspirations and earnest endeavours with the most beautiful gravel paths of cardinal virtues leading by the thickets and shrubberies of spiritual strivings, but, should he happen to find a few of these seedlings, and be able to raise them, they will not spoil the effect of the wholly admirable grove of moral purpose. To be quite candid, I think a little colour ‘sets off,’ as they say, the grandeur of high endeavour. It--well, it brightens it up.
NOVEMBER
‘I’ remarked Helen, ‘am the rose of Sharon, _and_ the lily of the valley.’
She laid great stress on the ‘and,’ which gave a perfectly new significance to the verse.
‘The French for lily of the valley is _muguet_,’ said Legs, with an intolerably superior air.
‘Oh, don’t show off!’ said she. ‘The great thing in walking along a rail is to keep your balance.’
‘Through the looking-glass,’ said I. ‘Upon which the White Knight fell head foremost into a hole----’
‘And kept on saying “Plenty of practice,”’ said Legs.
‘It’s easier if you wave your arms,’ said she. ‘Oh, there’s a train coming. Where’s the gum?’
Legs had the gum--a small penny bottle--and Helen hastily gummed a penny to the rail, and we all retired to the side of the line.
If you merely lay a penny on the rail, the chances are that the first wheel that goes over it causes it to jump, and it falls off, whereas if you gum it----
There was a wild maniac shriek from the engine, suddenly dropping an octave as it passed us, and the huge train, towering high above us, thundered by with rattle of wheels and the throbbing oscillation of very high speed. A dozen bits of paper came trundling and dancing after it. The rear of the van telescoped itself into a tiny square, and the signal just above us, which had been down to let the train pass, shot up a warning, right-angled arm.
‘Oh, well over sixty,’ said Legs, with deep appreciation, ‘and there’s the penny sitting as tight as, as--I don’t know. Lord, how hot!’
The penny had already been under half the wheels of four trains, and was so flattened that it was of knife-edge sharpness.
‘If you stropped it a little, you could shave with it,’ said Helen. ‘What babies you are!’
Legs was already busy on the up-line, arranging two pins crossways on the gummed rail, so that they should be flattened and welded together, making an entrancing object closely resembling a pair of scissors.
‘The up-train will be through in five minutes,’ he said. ‘Chuck me the penny, Helen.’
I had another object of interest--namely, a threepenny piece with a hole in it. I had tied a long string to this, the far end of which I held in my hand. The reason for this was that the coin was beginning to crack, but it would stand a wheel or two more, though it was already bigger than a sixpence; after a wheel or two I could pull it away.
‘Gum!’ said I.
We moved to the far side of the up-line, and waited. Soon from the tunnel a hundred yards below came a wreath of smoke, and the black-fronted engine raced towards us. Everything went right on that divine afternoon, and after four wheels had passed I jerked my threepenny piece away. The scissors were adorable also, and it would be scarcely necessary to strop the penny. Of course, we made a _cache_ of these objects, burying them in a small tin box with the addition of a piece of paper recording our names, weights, and ages. Legs also wrote a short confession of how he murdered his two infant children, and hid the bodies in a bramble-bush ten paces from the _cache_. There was no such bramble-bush really, which would make it more puzzling to the inquiring mind. He represented himself as being perfectly impenitent, and ready to commit similar crimes should opportunity occur. He signed it, Benjamin Yates of 21A, Park Lane, W. Then we went home to tea.
* * * * *
Legs had been in for his Foreign Office examination, and had come down to spend the next two days with us, before we all moved up to town; also, to our deep-felt and secret joy, he had shown no desire to visit the Ampses, or talk any more German with Charlotte. The process of disillusionment began, I think, on the evening in October when he was here last, and the Ampses dined with us; for I saw him overhear Mrs. Amps ask Helen who ‘was the heir to all our beautiful property.’ At that moment I almost pitied Mrs. Amps. She had begun by making jam, but I felt that she had gone on to cook Charlotte’s goose. Legs, anyhow, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and took a couple of seconds to recover himself. I am sure I don’t wonder. You require to recuperate after that sort of remark. I felt that I knew all about Mrs. Amps when she asked that simple question. I felt as if I had known her parents and grandparents, and could prophesy about her children and grandchildren; and Legs’ eyes, which till that moment had been quite shut, began to open, just to blink.
Next day, however, he lunched with them. What happened I do not know, since he has not told me; but he was rather silent in the evening, ate little, but drank four glasses of port after dinner. I think the instinct of the drowning of care was there, and he was slightly cynical and Byronic afterwards. I love Legs.
I hasten to add, lest I may appear unfeeling, that Charlotte has for the last week or two been kind and encouraging to another young man, who is the heir to far more beautiful property. I saw him at the golf-links yesterday in a bunker. He was arranging her hands so as to grasp her niblick properly. They seemed to want a great deal of arranging. By-and-by they allowed my opponent and me to pass. Charlotte seemed not to recognize me, or else she was really so much employed in making her hat stay on that she did not see me. I mentioned, however, to Legs that I had seen her, but that she had not seen me. It seemed to interest him very little.
But this morning, as Legs and I played golf over the grey back of the huge down that rises from our happy valley, it seemed a sheer insanity that we should all go up to London the next day, so blithe was the air, so invigorating to the whole sense. The short, springy turf seemed to put its own vitality into one’s feet; they were shot forward automatically without conscious effort. And--ah, the rapture!--(it occurred more frequently to Legs than to me) of seeing a clean white ball scud for a hundred yards or so low over the ground, and then rise swallow-like against the ineffable blue! Golfers, I am told, reck nothing of their surroundings, provided only they drive far, approach dead, and hole their puts; and so I must conclude--indeed, I conclude it for other reasons--that I am no golfer. But I am an epicure in my surroundings when I go a-golfing, and though the grey dunes and sandy hollows of the seaside course are most to my mind, I place very near those perfect joys the hugeness of scale which you get only on the uplands. To-day no whiff of vapour flecked the whole field of the shining heavens, and the country, grey and green, with fire of autumn beech-wood here and there, stretched map-like round us. But to the west the view was even more stirring to that desire of the infinite which lies so close to the heart of man. There fold after fold of downs, the knitted muscles of the huge, kind earth lay in unending interlacement. And it was all empty. There were no trees, no lines of hedgerows to break the void, and lend a scale to the eye. From the immediate green foreground slope after slope melted into grey, and from grey to the blue of distance, which fused itself into the tender azure of the sky’s horizon, so that the line between earth and air indistinguishable. It was as empty us the desert, yet one knew that from every inch of it a thousand lives rejoiced in the sun of November. Yes, even the knowledge that there would be but few more of such hours before winter hurled its armoury of squalls on to the earth added, perhaps, to their joy. None could have expected such a November as has been ours. We have snatched it from winter; it is our possession.
Yet the colour of the grass, no less than the underlying keenness of the air, savour of the sunless months. It is scarcely green; it has been bleached by the torrid months, and Nature is too wise to let it shine forth in a fresh coat of colour when so soon it will sleep, waiting for the spring. High up in the liquid blue, too, of the sky there is the sparkle of frost, for all the warm strength of the sunlight. It is not summer that floats above our heads, soon to descend earthwards, but the frost and cold. Yet they bless the Lord also.
But though I feel all this, feel it in every bone and fibre of my body, I know that I feel it more when I am doing something else--as, for instance, playing golf. I think it must be that one pleasure quickens others. The fact of attempting to keep one’s eye on the ball as one hits it makes the whole of one’s perceptions more alert. If I was taking a solitary walk here, with no occupation except that of walking, I know quite well that I should not be conscious of the same rapturous well-being as I am now, when the object of my walk is to hit a small piece of indiarubber for three or four miles, hitting it, too, as seldom as possible. So it is not the mere hitting it that gives rapture, else the rapture would be increased by the frequency of the operation. Oh, I have been talking on the stroke! This will never do. But it was my own stroke, and Hampshire flew about in fids in consequence.
This was at the twelfth hole, and it made the match square. Legs, I need hardly remark, was playing a pitiful game for him. But on the moment--this is one of the inexplicable things about those foolish people who play games--- my whole mood changed. I cared no more at all for the empty, glorious downs. I did not mind whether the grass was blue, or grey, or green, or magenta. I saw no more flaring beech-woods, no more mapped counties. There was one desire only in the entire contents of my soul, and that was to beat Legs. I did not feel as if I even wanted anything so much as that, and if Mephistopheles had appeared at that moment to bargain for my salvation as the price of my victory, I should have signed in my blood or any other blood that was handy. But Mephistopheles was probably otherwise engaged. At any rate, after being still all square at the seventeenth, I drove into a silly irrational bunker that ought never to have been there at the eighteenth. I took three to get out. But we had a heavenly morning. If only ... well, well. And Legs told Helen that he only just won, because he was completely off his game! The tongue is an unruly member. Mine is. Had I won, I should have certainly told Helen that Legs played a magnificent game and I had only just won. That sounds more generous than his remark, but if you think it over, you will see that it comes to exactly the same thing.
Yes; it seems an insanity to leave the country just now, especially since there is no earthly reason for our doing so. Divine things, it is true, are going on in town, for our matchless Isolde is conducting symphony concerts, and a perfect constellation of evening stars are singing together at the opera; but, after all, Legs and I play the ‘Meistersinger’ overture arranged for four hands on the piano; while, for the rich soup of Sloane Street mud and the vapour-ridden sky, we have here the turf of the downland and the ineffable blue. In fact, I am sorry to go, but should be rather disappointed if I was told that I was not going. Helen characterizes this state of mind as feeble, which it undoubtedly is, and says that she is perfectly willing either to go to-morrow or to stop on another week, if I will only make up my mind which I want to do. But there is the whole difficulty: I haven’t the slightest idea which I want to do. You might as well say to a dog which is being called from opposite quarters by two beloved voices: ‘Only make up your mind which of us you like best.’ If it knew, the question would be solved.
Well, the question was solved by tossing up, and then, of course, doing the opposite to what we had decided the arbitrament of the coin should indicate. If it was heads, we were to stop in the country; and since it was heads, that helped us to decide that we would go to town. That, too, may seem a feeble proceeding, but I do not think it really is. To do anything as irrational as tossing causes the mind to revolt from the absurdity of abiding by the result. The consequence is that a weighty factor for doing what the coin did not indicate is supplied; for you never toss unless you are quite unable to decide.
So for the last afternoon the garden claimed me, for not only is the garden the symbol and embodiment of the country, but to me it is a sort of diary almost, since the manual acts of planting and tending have got so interwoven with that which made one’s mind busy while the hands were thus occupied that the sight of this plant or that, of a new trellis, or the stacked sticks of the summer’s sweet-peas, are, when one looks at them as now, retrospectively, on the eve of departure, retranslated back, as are the records of a phonograph, into the memories that have been pricked and stamped into them. All I see--croquet hoops, flower-beds--without ceasing to be themselves, have all become a secret cipher. By some mysterious alchemy, something of oneself has passed into them. Secret fibres of soul-stuff are woven into them. Through the touch of the hands that tended them, something from the being of that which directed those hands has entered into their life, so that next year, it may be, some regret belonging to an autumn day will flower in the daffodils of our planting. Hope, I am sure, will flower too; and with how vivid a wave of memory do I know what silent resolve went into the cutting back of that Gloire de Dijon! Thus, when in June its fragrance streams in the air, one must trust that some fragrance not its own, but of a fruit-bearing effort, will be spread about the garden.