Chapter 13

But the particular wasp at table I had in my mind remains to be spoken of. I was lunching at the house of a friend, the vicar of a lonely parish in Hampshire, and besides ourselves there were five ladies, four of them young, at our round table. The window stood open, and by-and-by a wasp flew in and began to investigate the dishes, the plates, then the eaters themselves, impartially buzzing before each face in turn. On his last round, before taking his departure, he continued to buzz so long before my face, first in front of one eye then the other, as if to make sure that they were fellows and had the same expression, that I at length impatiently remarked that I did not care for his too flattering attentions. And that was really the only inconsiderate or inhospitable word his visit had called forth. Yet there were, I have said, five ladies present! They had neither welcomed nor repelled him, and had not regarded him; and although it was impossible to be unconscious of his presence at table, it was as if he had not been there. But then these ladies were cyclists: one, in addition to the beautiful brown colour with which the sun had painted her face, showed some dark and purple stains on cheek and forehead--marks of a resent dangerous collision with a stone wall at the foot of a steep hill.

Here I had intended telling about other meetings with other wasps, but having touched on a subject concerning which nothing is ever said and volumes might be written--namely, the Part played by the bicycle in the emancipation of women--I will go on with it. That they are not really emancipated doesn't matter, since they move towards that goal, and doubtless they would have gone on at the same old, almost imperceptible rate for long years but for the sudden impulse imparted by the wheel. Middle-aged people can recall how all England held up its hands and shouted "No, no!" from shore to shore at the amazing and upsetting spectacle of a female sitting astride on a safety machine, indecently moving her legs up and down just like a man. But having tasted the delights of swift easy motion, imparted not by any extraneous agency, but--oh, sweet surprise!--by her own in-dwelling physical energy, she refused to get off. By staying on she declared her independence; and we who were looking on--some of us--rejoiced to see it; for did we not also see, when these venturesome leaders returned to us from careering unattended over the country, when easy motion had tempted them long distances into strange, lonely places, where there was no lover nor brother nor any chivalrous person to guard and rescue them from innumerable perils--from water and fire, mad bulls and ferocious dogs, and evil-minded tramps and drunken, dissolute men, and from all venomous, stinging, creeping, nasty, horrid things--did we not see that they were no longer the same beings we had previously known, that in their long flights in heat and cold and rain and wind and dust they had shaken off some ancient weakness that was theirs, that without loss of femininity they had become more like ourselves in the sense that they were more self-centred and less irrational?

But women, alas! can seldom follow up a victory. They are, as even the poet when most anxious to make the best of them mournfully confesses:

variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made.

Inconstant in everything, they soon cast aside the toy which had taught them so great a lesson and served them so well, carrying them so far in the direction they wished to go. And no sooner had they cast it aside than a fresh toy, another piece of mechanism, came on the scene to captivate their hearts, and instead of a help, to form a hindrance. The motor not only carried them back over all the ground they had covered on the bicycle, but further still, almost back to the times of chairs and fans and smelling-salts and sprained ankles at Lyme Regis. A painful sight was the fair lady not yet forty and already fat, overclothed and muffled up in heavy fabrics and furs, a Pekinese clasped in her arms, reclining in her magnificent forty-horse-power car with a man (_Homo sapiens_) in livery to drive her from shop to shop and house to house. One could shut one's eyes until it passed--shut them a hundred or five hundred times a day in every thoroughfare in every town in England; but alas! one couldn't shut out the fact that this spectacle had fascinated and made captive the soul of womankind, that it was now their hope, their dream, their beautiful ideal--the one universal ideal that made all women sisters, from the greatest ladies in the land downwards, and still down, from class to class, even to the semi-starved ragged little pariah girl scrubbing the front steps of a house in Mean Street for a penny.

The splendid spectacle has now been removed from their sight, but is it out of mind? Are they not waiting and praying for the war to end so that there may be petrol to buy and men returned from the front to cast off their bloodstained clothes and wash and bleach their blackened faces, to put themselves in a pretty livery and drive the ladies and their Pekinese once more?

A friend of mine once wrote a charming booklet entitled _Wheel Magic_, which was all about his rambles on the machine and its effect on him. He is not an athlete--on the contrary he is a bookish man who has written books enough to fill a cart, and has had so much to do with books all his life that one might imagine he had by some strange accident been born in the reading-room of the British Museum; or that originally he had actually been a bookworm, a sort of mite, spontaneously engendered between the pages of a book, and that the supernatural being who presides over the reading-room had, as a little pleasantry, transformed him into a man so as to enable him to read the books on which he had previously nourished himself.

I can't follow my friend's wanderings and adventures as, springing out of his world of books, he flits and glides like a vagrant, swift-winged, irresponsible butterfly about the land, sipping the nectar from a thousand flowers and doing his hundred miles in a day and feeling all the better for it, for this was a man's book, and the wheel and its magic was never a necessity in man's life. But it has a magic of another kind for woman, and I wish that some woman of genius would arise and, inspired perhaps by the ghost of Benjamin Ward Richardson in his prophetic mood, tell of this magic to her sisters. Tell them, if they are above labour in the fields or at the wash-tub, that the wheel, without fatiguing, will give them the deep breath which will purify the blood, invigorate the heart, stiffen the backbone, harden the muscles; that the mind will follow and accommodate itself to these physical changes; finally, that the wheel will be of more account to them than all the platforms in the land, and clubs of all the pioneers and colleges, all congresses, titles, honours, votes, and all the books that have been or ever will be written.

XXXIII

WASPS AND MEN

I now find that I must go back to the subject of my last paper on the wasp in order to define my precise attitude towards that insect. Then, too, there was another wasp at table, not in itself a remarkably interesting incident, but I am anxious to relate it for the following reason.

If there is one sweetest thought, one most cherished memory in a man's mind, especially if he be a person of gentle pacific disposition, whose chief desire is to live in peace and amity with all men, it is the thought and recollection of a good fight in which he succeeded in demolishing his adversary. If his fights have been rare adventures and in most cases have gone against him, so much the more will he rejoice in that one victory.

It chanced that a wasp flew into the breakfast room of a country house in which I was a guest, when we were all--about fourteen in number, mostly ladies, young and middle-aged--seated at the table. The wasp went his rounds in the usual way, dropping into this or that plate or dish, feeling foods with his antennae or tasting with his tongue, but staying nowhere, and as he moved so did the ladies, starting back with little screams and exclamations of disgust and apprehension. For these ladies, it hardly need be said, were not cyclists. Then the son of the house, a young gentleman of twenty-two, a footballer and general athlete, got up, pushed back his chair and said: "Don't worry, I'll soon settle his hash."

Then I too rose from my seat, for I had made a vow not to allow a wasp to be killed unnecessarily in my presence.

"Leave it to me, please," I said, "and I'll put him out in a minute."

"No, sit down," he returned. "I have said I'm going to kill it."

"You shall not," I returned; and then the two of us, serviettes in hand, went for the wasp, who got frightened and flew all round the room, we after it. After some chasing he rose high and then made a dash at the window, but instead of making its escape at the lower open part, struck the glass.

"Now I've got him!" cried my sportsman in great glee; but he had not got him, for I closed with him, and we swayed about and put forth all our strength, and finally came down with a crash on a couch under the window. Then after some struggling I succeeded in getting on top, and with my right hand on his face and my knee on his body to keep him pressed down, I managed with my left hand to capture the wasp and put him out.

Then we got up--he with a scarlet face, furious at being baulked; but he was a true sportsman, and without one word went back to his seat at the table.

Undoubtedly it was a disgraceful scene in a room full of ladies, but he, not I, provoked it and was the ruffian, as I'm sure he will be ready to confess if he ever reads this.

But why all this fuss over a wasp's life, and in such circumstances, in a room full of nervous ladies, in a house where I was a guest? It was not that I care more for a wasp than for any other living creature--I don't love them in the St. Francis way; the wasp is not my little sister; but I hate to see any living creature unnecessarily, senselessly, done to death. There are other creatures I can see killed without a qualm--flies, for instance, especially houseflies and the big blue-bottle; these are, it was formerly believed, the progeny of Satan, and modern scientists are inclined to endorse that ancient notion. The wasp is a redoubtable fly-killer, and apart from his merits, he is a perfect and beautiful being, and there is no more sense in killing him than in destroying big game and a thousand beautiful wild creatures that are harmless to man. Yet this habit of killing a wasp is so common, ingrained as it were, as to be almost universal among us, and is found in the gentlest and humanest person, and even the most spiritual-minded men come to regard it as a sort of religious duty and exercise, as the incident I am going to relate will show.

I came to Salisbury one day to find it full of visitors, but I succeeded in getting a room in one of the small family hotels. I was told by the landlord that a congress was being held, got up by the Society for the pursuit or propagation of Holiness, and that delegates, mostly evangelical clergymen and ministers of the gospel of all denominations, with many lay brothers, had come in from all over the kingdom and were holding meetings every day and all day long at one of the large halls. The three bedrooms on the same floor with mine, he said, were all occupied by delegates who had travelled from the extreme north of England.

In the evening I met these three gentlemen and heard all about their society and congress and its aim and work from them.

Next morning at about half-past six I was roused from sleep by a tremendous commotion in the room adjoining mine: cries and shouts, hurried trampings over the floor, blows on walls and windows and the crash of overthrown furniture. However, before I could shake my sleep off and get up to find out the cause, there were shouts of laughter, a proof that no one had been killed or seriously injured, and I went to sleep again.

At breakfast we met once more, and I was asked if I had been much disturbed by the early morning noise and excitement. They proceeded to explain that a wasp had got into the room of their friend--indicating the elderly gentleman who had taken the head of the table; and as he was an invalid and afraid of being stung, he had shouted to them to come to his aid. They had tumbled out of bed and rushed in, and before beginning operations had made him cover his face and head with the bedclothes, after which they started hunting the wasp. But he was too clever for them. They threw things at him and struck at him with their garments, pillows, slippers, whatever came to hand, and still he escaped, and in rushing round in their excitement everything in the room except the bedstead was overthrown. At last the wasp, tired out or terrified dropped to the floor, and they were on him like a shot and smashed him with the slippers they had in their hands.

"And you call yourselves religious men!" I remarked when they had finished their story and looked at me expecting me to say something.

They stared astonished at me, then exchanged glances and burst out laughing, and laughed as if they had heard something too excruciatingly funny. The elderly clergyman who had been saved from the winged man-eating dragon that had invaded his room managed at last to recover his gravity, and his friends followed suit; they then all three silently looked at me again as if they expected to hear something more.

Not to disappoint them, I started telling them about the life and work of a famous nobleman, one of England's great pro-consuls, who for many years had ruled over various countries in distant regions of the earth, and many barbarous and semi-savage nations, by whom he was regarded, for his wisdom and justice and sympathy with the people he governed, almost as a god. This great man, who was now living in retirement at home, had just founded a Society for the Protection of Wasps, and had so far admitted two of his friends who were in sympathy with his objects to membership. As soon as I heard of the society I had sent in an application to be admitted, too, and felt it would be a proud day for me if the founder considered me worthy of being the fourth member.

Having concluded my remarks, the three religious gentlemen, who had listened attentively and seriously to my praises of the great pro-consul, once more exchanged glances and again burst out laughing, and continued laughing, rocking in their chairs with laughter, until they could laugh no more for exhaustion, and the elderly gentleman removed his spectacles to wipe the tears from his eyes.

Such extravagant mirth surprised me in that grey-haired man who was manifestly in very bad health, yet had travelled over three hundred miles from his remote Cumberland parish to give the benefit of his burning thoughts to his fellow-seekers after holiness congregated at Salisbury from all parts of the country.

The gust of merriment having blown its fill, ending quite naturally in "minute drops from off the eaves," I gravely wished them good-bye and left the room. They did not know, they never suspected that the amusement had been on both sides, and that despite their laughter it had been ten times greater on mine than on theirs.

I can't in conclusion resist the temptation to tell just one more wasp incident, although I fear it will hurt the tender-hearted and religious reader's susceptibilities more than any of those I have already told. But it will be told briefly, without digression and moralisings.

We have come to regard Nature as a sort of providence who is mindful of us and recompenses us according to what our lives are--whether we worship her and observe her ordinances or find our pleasure in breaking them and mocking her who will not be mocked. But it is sad for those who have the feeling of kinship for all living things, both great and small, from the whale and the elephant down even to the harvest mouse and beetle and humble earthworm, to know that killing--killing for sport or fun--is not forbidden in her decalogue. If the killing at home is not sufficient to satisfy a man, he can transport himself to the Dark Continent and revel in the slaughter of all the greatest and noblest forms of life on the globe. There is no crime and no punishment and no comfort to those who are looking on, except some on exceedingly rare occasion when we receive a thrill of joy at the lamentable tidings of the violent death of some noble young gentleman beloved of everybody and a big-game hunter, who was elephant-shooting, when one of the great brutes, stung to madness by his wounds, turned, even when dying, on his persecutor and trampled him to death.

In a small, pretty, out-of-the-world village in the West of England I made the acquaintance of the curate, a boyish young fellow not long from Oxford, who was devoted to sport and a great killer. He was not satisfied with cricket and football in their seasons and golf and lawn tennis--he would even descend to croquet when there was nothing else--and boxing and fencing, and angling in the neighbouring streams, but he had to shoot something every day as well. And it was noticed by the villagers that the shooting fury was always strongest on him on Mondays. They said it was a reaction; that after the restraint of Sunday with its three services, especially the last when he was permitted to pour out his wild curatical eloquence, the need of doing something violent and savage was most powerful; that he had, so to say, to wash out the Sunday taste with blood.

One August, on one of these Mondays, he was dodging along a hedge-side with his gun trying to get a shot at some bird, when he unfortunately thrust his foot into a populous wasps' nest, and the infuriated wasps issued in a cloud and inflicted many stings on his head and face and neck and hands, and on other parts of his anatomy where they could thrust their little needles through his clothes.

This mishap was the talk of the village. "Never mind," they said cheerfully--they were all very cheerful over it--"he's a good sports-man, and like all of that kind, hard as nails, and he'll soon be all right, making a joke of it."

The result "proved the rogues, they lied," that he was not hard as nails, but from that day onwards was a very poor creature indeed. The brass and steel wires in his system had degenerated into just those poor little soft grey threads which others have and are subject to many fantastical ailments. He fell into a nervous condition and started and blanched and was confused when suddenly hailed or spoken to even by some harmless old woman. He trembled at a shadow, and the very sight and sound of a wasp in the breakfast room when he was trying to eat a little toast and marmalade filled him, thrilled him, with fantastic terrors never felt before. And in vain to still the beating of his heart he would sit repeating: "It's only a wasp and nothing more." Then some of the parishioners who loved animals, for there are usually one or two like that in a village, began to say that it was a "judgment" on him, that old Mother Nature, angry at the persecutions of her feathered children by this young cleric who was supposed to be a messenger of mercy, had revenged herself on him in that way, using her little yellow insects as her ministers.

XXXIV

IN CHITTERNE CHURCHYARD

Chitterne is one of those small out-of-the-world villages in the south Wiltshire downs which attract one mainly because of their isolation and loneliness and their unchangeableness. Here, however, you discover that there has been an important change in comparatively recent years--some time during the first half of the last century. Chitterne, like most villages, possesses one church, a big building with a tall spire standing in its central part. Before it was built there were two churches and two Chitternes--two parishes with one village, each with its own proper church. These were situated at opposite ends of the one long street, and were small ancient buildings, each standing in its own churchyard. One of these disused burying-places, with a part of the old building still standing in it, is a peculiarly attractive spot, all the more so because of long years of neglect and of ivy, bramble, and weed and flower of many kinds that flourish in it, and have long obliterated the mounds and grown over the few tombs and headstones that still exist in the ground.

It was an excessively hot August afternoon when I last visited Chitterne, and, wishing to rest for an hour before proceeding on my way, I went to this old churchyard, naturally thinking that I should have it all to myself. But I found two persons there, both old women of the peasant class, meanly dressed; yet it was evident they had their good clothes on and were neat and clean, each with a basket on her arm, probably containing her luncheon. For they were only visitors and strangers there, and strangers to one another as they were to me--that, too, I could guess: also that they had come there with some object--perhaps to find some long unvisited grave, for they were walking about, crossing and recrossing each other's track, pausing from time to time to look round, then pulling the ivy aside from some old tomb and reading or trying to read the worn, moss-grown inscription. I began to watch their movements with growing interest, and could see that they, too, were very much interested in each other, although for a long time they did not exchange a word. Presently I, too, fell to examining the gravestones, just to get near them, and while pretending to be absorbed in the inscriptions I kept a sharp eye on their movements. They took no notice of me. I was nothing to them--merely one of another class, a foreigner, so to speak, a person cycling about the country who was just taking a ten minutes' peep at the place to gratify an idle curiosity. But who was _she_--that other old woman; and what did she want hunting about there in this old forsaken churchyard? was doubtless what each of those two was saying to herself. And by-and-by their curiosity got the better of them; then contrived to meet at one stone which they both appeared anxious to examine.