Chapter 4

Others followed. I was struck by the fact that nearly all the songs were of an extremely melancholy nature--the chief objects celebrated by the Muse being withered flowers, little coffins, the corpses of sweethearts, last farewells, and hopeless partings on the lonely shore. Tears flow; ladies sigh; voices choke; hearts break; children die; lovers prove untrue. It was tragic, and I confess I could have wept myself--not at the songs, for they were stupid enough,--but to think of the grey lugubrious life whose keynote was all too truly struck by this morbid, melancholy stuff.

Tom Barter, who had been in the army, and was just convalescent from a bad turn of _delirium tremens_, sang a song about a dying soldier, visited on his gory bed by a succession of white-robed spirits, including his little sister, his aged mother, and a young female with a babe, whom the dying hero appeared to have treated none too well.

The song was vigorously encored, and Tom at once responded with a second--and I have no doubt, genuine--barrack-room ballad. The hero of this ditty is a "Lancer bold." He is duly wetted with tears before his departure for the wars; but is cheered up at the last moment by the lady's assurance that she will meet him on his return in "a carriage gay." Arrived at the front, he performs the usual prodigies: slashes his way through the smoke, spikes the enemy's guns, and spears "Afghanistan's chieftains" right and left. He then returns to England, dreaming of wedding bells, and we next see him on the deck of a troop-ship, scanning the expectant throng on the shore and asking himself, "Where, oh where, is that carriage gay?" Of course, it isn't there, and the disconsolate Lancer at once repairs to the "smiling" village whence the lady had intended to issue in the carriage. Here he is met by "a jet-black hearse with nodding plumes," seeks information from the weeping bystanders, and has his worst suspicions confirmed. He compares the gloomy vehicle before him with the "carriage gay" of his dreams, and, having sufficiently elaborated the contrast, resolves to end his blighted existence on the lady's grave. How he spends the next interval is not told; but towards midnight we find him in the churchyard with his "trusty" weapon in his hand. This, in keeping with the unities, should have been a lance; but apparently the Lancer was armed on some mixed principle known to the War Office, and allowed to take his pick of weapons before going on leave; for presently a shot rings out, and one of England's stoutest champions is no more.

During the singing of this song I noticed a poorly clad girl, with a sweet, intelligent face, put a handkerchief to her mouth and stifle a sob. She quietly made her way towards the barn door, and presently slipped out into the night.

The thing had not escaped the notice of Snarley Bob, and I could see wrath in his eyes. Being near him, I asked what it meant. "By God!" he said, "it's a good job for Tom Barter as the rheumatiz has crippled my old hands. If I could only double my fist, I'd put a mark on his silly jaw as 'ud stop him singing that song for many a day to come. Not that there's any sense in it. But it's just because there's no sense in 'em that such songs oughtn't to be sung. See that young woman go out just now? Well, she's in a decline, and knows as she can't last very long. And she's got a young man in India--in the same battery as our Bill--as nice and straight a lad as ever you see."

Another song was called "Fallen Leaves," the singer being a son of Peter Shott, the local preacher--a young man of dissipated appearance, with a white face and an excellent tenor voice. This song, of course, was a disquisition on the evanescence of all things here below. Each verse began "I saw," and ended with the refrain:

"Fallen leaves, fallen leaves! With woe untold my bosom heaves, Fallen leaves, fallen leaves!"

"I saw," said the song, a mixed assortment of decaying glories--among them, a pair of lovers on a seat, a Christmas family party, a rosebush, a railway accident on Bank Holiday, a rake's deathbed, a battlefield, an oak tree in its pride, and the same oak in process of being converted by an undertaker into a coffin for the poet's only friend. All these and many more the poet "saw" and buried in his fallen leaves, assuring the world that his bosom heaved with woe untold for every one of them.

Tom Barter, who was the leading emotionalist in the parish, was visibly affected, his bosom heaving in a manner which the poet himself could not have excelled; while his poor anæmic wife, who had hesitated about coming to the feast because her eye was still discoloured from the blow Tom had given her last week, feebly expressed the hope "that it would do him good."

So it went on. Whatever jocund rebecks may have sounded in the England of long ago, their strains found no echo in the funeral ditties of the Perrymans' feast.

Snarley Bob, in whom the drink had kindled some hankering for eternal splendours, was well content with the singing of "The Farmer's Boy," and joined in the chorus with the remnants of a once mighty voice. After that he became restless and increasingly snappish; his face darkened at "Fallen Leaves," and he began to look positively dangerous when a young man who was a railway porter in town, now home for a holiday, made a ghastly attempt at merriment by singing a low-class music-hall catch. What he would have done or said I do not know, for at that moment the announcement was made which the reader has been expecting--that Mrs. Abel would give a recitation.

"Now," said Snarley to his neighbour, "we shall have summat like." His whole being sprang to attention. He rapidly knocked out the ashes of his pipe, refilled, and lit; and, folding his arms before him on the table, leant forward to listen. For my part, I took a convenient station where I could watch Snarley, as Hamlet watched the king in the play. He was far too intent on Mrs. Abel to notice me.

The barn was dimly lighted, and the speaker, standing far back from the end of the table, was in deep shadow and almost invisible. Has the reader ever heard a voice which trembles with emotions gathered up from countless generations of human experience--a voice in which the memories of ages, the designs of Nature, the woes and triumphs of evolving worlds become articulate; a voice that speaks a language not of words, but of things, transmuting the eternal laws to tones, and pouring into the soul by their means a stream of solicitations to the secret springs of the buried life? Such voices there are: Wordsworth heard one of them in the song of "The Solitary Reaper." In such a voice, rolling forth from the shadows, and in exquisite articulation, there came to us these words:

"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness steals my sense, As though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains, One minute past, and Lethewards had sunk."

The noisy crew were hushed: silence fell like a palpable thing. Snarley Bob shifted his position: he raised his arms from the table, grasped his chin with his right hand; with his left he took the pipe from his mouth, and pointed its stem at the speaker; his features relaxed, and then fixed into the immobility of the worshipping saint.

Observation was difficult; for I, too, was half hypnotised by the voice from the shadows; but what I remember I will tell.

The voice has now finished the second verse, and is entering the third, the note slightly raised, and with a tone like that of a wailing wind:

"That I might drink and leave the world unseen, And, with thee, fade away into the forest dim.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known."

Snarley Bob rises erect in his place, still holding his chin with his right hand, and with the left pointing his pipe, as before, at the speaker. The rigid arm is trembling violently, and Snarley, with half-open mouth, is drawing his breath in gulps. Someone, his wife I think, tries to make him sit down. He detaches his right hand, and violently thrusts her away.

For some minutes he remains in this attitude. The verse:

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird,"

is now reached, and I can see that violent tremors are passing through Snarley's frame. His head has sunk towards his breast, and is shaking; his right arm has fallen to his side, the fingers hooked as though he would clench his fist. Thus he stands, his head jerking now and then into an upright position, and shaking more and more. He has ceased to point at the speaker; the pipe is on the table. Thus to the end.

Somebody claps; another feebly knocks his glass on the board; there is a general whisper of "Hush!" Snarley Bob has sunk on to the bench; he folds his arms on the table, rests his head upon them as a tired man would do; a tremor shakes him once or twice; then he closes his eyes, and is still. He has apparently fallen asleep.

No one, save myself, has paid much attention to Snarley, who is at the end of the room furthest from Mrs. Abel. But now his attitude is noticed, and somebody says, "Hullo, Snarley's had a drop too much this time. Give him a shake-up, missis."

The "shake-up," however, is not needed. For Snarley, after a few minutes of apparent sleep, raises his head, looks round him, and again stands upright. A flood of incoherencies, spoken in a high-pitched, whining voice, pours from his lips. Now and then comes a clear sentence, mingled with fragments of the poem--these in a startling reproduction of Mrs. Abel's tones--thus: "The gentleman's callin' for drink. Why don't they bring him drink? Here, young woman, bring him a pint o' ale, and put three-ha'porth of gin in it--the door's openin', and he's goin' through. He'll soon be there--

"'Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known.'

All right--it's bloomin' well all right--don't give him any more.

"'Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain.'

--It's the Passing Bell.--What are they ringing it for?--He's not dead--he'll come back again when he's ready.--Stop 'em ringing that bell!

"'Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self.'

All right--he's comin' back.--Nightingales!--Who wants to hear about a lot o' bloomin' nightingales. _I_ don't. _I'm_ all right--get me a cup o' tea.--It's Tom Barter who's drunk, not me!

"'Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow.'

The mail goes o' Fridays--K Battery, Peshawur, Punjaub--O my God, let Bill tell him!--Shut up, you blasted old fool, or I'll knock yer silly head off! _You'll_ never get there!--What do _you_ know about nightingales? I heard 'em singin' for hundreds and thousands of years before _you_ were born:

"'Thou was not born for death, immortal bird, No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I heard this passing night was heard In ancient days, by Emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same voice that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn, The same that ofttimes hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.'"

The whole of this verse was a reproduction of Mrs. Abel's rendering, spoken in a voice not unlike hers, and with scarcely the falter of a syllable. It was followed by a few seconds of incoherent babble, at the end of which tremors again broke out over Snarley's body; he swayed to and fro, and his head fell forward on his chest. "Catch hold of him, or he'll fall," cried somebody. Then a medley of voices--"Give him a drop of brandy!" "No, don't you see he's dead drunk a'ready?" "Drunk! not 'im. Do you think he could imitate Mrs. Abel like that if he was drunk?" "Take them gels out o' the barn as quick as you can!" "If she don't stop shriekin' when you get 'er home, throw a bucket o' cold water over her. It's only 'isterics." "Well, I've seed a lot o' queer things in my time, and I've knowed Snarley to do some rum tricks, but I never seed nowt like _that_." "Oh dear, sir, I never felt so upset in all my life. It isn't _right_! Somebody ought to ha' stopped 'im. I wonder Mr. Abel didn't interfere." "That there poem o' Mrs. Abel's was a'most too much for me. But to think o' _him_ gettin' up like that! It must be Satan that's got into him." "It's a awful thing to 'ave a man like that livin' in the next cottage to your own. I'll be frightened out o' my wits when my master's not at 'ome." "They ought to _do_ something to 'im--I've said so many a time."

And then the voice of Snarley's wife as she chafed her husband's hands: "No, sir, don't you believe 'em when they say he's drunk. He's only had two glasses of cider and half a glass o' beer. You can see the other half in his glass now. I counted 'em myself. And it takes quarts to make 'im tipsy. It's a sort of trance, sir, as he's had. I've knowed him like this two or three times before. He was _just_ like it after he'd been to hear Sir Robert Ball on the stars, sir--worse, if anythin'. He's gettin' better now; but I'm afraid he'll be terrible upset."

Snarley had opened his eyes, and was looking vacantly and sleepily round him. "I'll go home," was all he said. He got up and walked rather shakily, but without assistance, out of the barn.

A few minutes later Mrs. Abel came up to me. "We were fools five months ago," she said; "but what are we now?"

"Criminals, most likely," I replied.

"And if you do it again, you'll be murderers," said Mr. Abel, in a tone of severity.

A MIRACLE

I

In early life Chandrapál had been engaged in the practice of the law, and had held a position of some honour under the Crown. But as the years wore on the ties which bound him to the world of sense were severed one by one, and he was now released. By the study of the Vedanta, by ascetic discipline, and by the daily practice of meditation undertaken at regular hours, he had attained the Great Peace; and those who knew the signs of such attainment reverenced him as a holy man. His influence was great, his fidelity was unquestioned, and his fame as a teacher and sage had been carried far beyond his native land.

Chandrapál was versed in the lore of the West. He had studied the history, the politics, the literature and philosophy of the great nations, and could quote their poets and their sages with copiousness and aptitude. He had written a commentary on _Faust_. He also read, and sometimes expounded, the New Testament; and he held the Christian Gospel in high esteem.

Among the philosophers of the West it was Spinoza to whom he gave the place of highest honour. Regarding the Great Peace as the ultimate object of human attainment, he held that Spinoza alone had found a clear path to the goal; since then European thought had been continually decadent.

Though far advanced in life, Chandrapál had never seen Western civilisation face to face until the year when we are about to meet him. He travelled to America by way of Japan, and Vancouver was the first Western city in which he set his foot. There he looked around him with bewildered eyes, gaining no clear impression, save in the negative sense that the city contained nothing to remind him of Spinoza or of the Nazarene. It was not that he expected to find a visible embodiment of their teaching in everything he saw; Chandrapál was too wise for that. But he hoped that somewhere and in some form the Truth, which for him these teachers symbolised in common, would show itself as a living thing. It might be that he would see it on some human face; or he might feel it in the atmosphere; or he might hear it in the voice of a man. Chandrapál knew that he had much to see and to discover; but in all his travels it was for this that he kept incessant watch.

From Vancouver he passed south to San Francisco; thence, city by city, he threaded his way across the United States and found himself in New York. All that he had seen so far gathered itself into one vast picture of a world fast bound in the chains of error and groaning for deliverance from its misery. In New York the misery seemed to deepen and the groanings to redouble. But of this he said nothing. He let the universities fête him; he let the millionaires entertain him in their great houses; he delivered lectures on the wisdom of the East, and, though a kindly criticism would now and then escape him, he gave no hint of his great pity for Western men. He was the most courteous, the most delightful of guests.

Arrived in England, he received the same impression and practised the same reserve. Wherever he went a rumour spread before him, and men waited for his coming as though the ancient mysteries were about to be unsealed. The curious cross-examined him; the bewildered appealed to him; the poor heard him gladly, and famished souls, eager for a morsel of comfort from the groaning table of the East, hovered about his steps. He preached in churches where the wandering prophet is welcomed; he broke bread with the kings of knowledge and of song; he sat in the seats of the mighty and received honour as one to whom honour is due.

To all this he responded with a gratitude which was sincere; but his deeper gratitude was for the Powers by whose ordering he had been born neither an Englishman nor a Christian, but a Hindu.

Here, as in America, he looked about him observingly and pondered the meaning of what he saw. But he understood it not, and went hither and thither like a man in a dream. In his Indian home he had studied Western civilisation from the books which tell of its mighty works and its religion; and, so studied, it had seemed to him an intelligible thing. But, seen with the naked eye, it appeared incomprehensible, nay, incredible. Its bigness oppressed him, its variety confused him, its restlessness made him numb. Values seemed to be inverted, perspectives to be distorted, good and evil to be transposed: "in" meant "out," and Death did duty for Life. Chandrapál could not take the point of view, and finally concluded there was no point of view to take. He could not frame his visions into coherence, and therefore judged that he was looking at chaos. Sometimes he would doubt the reality of what he saw, and would recollect himself and seek for evidence that he was awake. "Can such things be?" he would say to himself; "for this people has turned all things upside down. Their happiness is misery, their wisdom is bewilderment, their truth is self-deception, their speech is a disguise, their science is the parent of error, their life is a process of suicide, their god is the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. What is believed is not professed, and what is professed is not believed. In yonder place"--he was looking at London--"there is darkness and misery enough for seven hells. Verily they have already come to judgment and been condemned."

So thought Chandrapál. But his mistake, if it was one, offended nobody; for he held his peace about these things.

* * * * *

There came a day when the folk of Deadborough were started from their wonted apathy by the apparition of a Strange Man. They saw him first as he drove from the station in a splendid carriage-and-pair, with a coronet on its panels. Seated in the carriage was a venerable being with a swarthy countenance and headgear of the whitest--such was the brief vision. Other carriages followed in due course, for there was an illustrious house-party at Deadborough Hall--the owner of which was not only a slayer of pheasants, but a reader of books and a student of things. He had gathered together the Bishop of the Diocese, a Cabinet Minister, two eminent philosophers, the American Ambassador, a leading historian, and a Writer on the Mystics. To these was added--for he deserves a sentence to himself--an Orientalist of world-wide reputation. All were gathered for the purpose of meeting Chandrapál.

By the charm of his manners, by his urbanity, by his brilliant and thought-provoking conversation, the Oriental repaid his host a hundred times over. To most of his fellow-guests he played the part of teacher, while seeming to act that of disciple; but to none was his manner so deferential and his air of attention so profound as to the great Orientalist. And yet in the secret heart of Chandrapál this was the man for whom he felt the deepest compassion. He found, indeed, that the great man's reputation had not belied him; he was versed in the wisdom of the East and in the tongues which had spoken it; he knew the path to the Great Peace as well as the sage knew it himself; but when Chandrapál looked into his restless eyes and heard the hard tones of his voice, he perceived that no soul on earth was further from the Great Peace than this.

With the two philosophers Chandrapál spent many hours in close debate. He spoke to them of the Bhagavad Gita and of Spinoza. He found that of the Bhagavad Gita they knew little--and they cared less. Of Spinoza they knew much and understood nothing--thus thought he. So he turned to other topics and conversed fluently on the matters dearest to their hearts--namely, their own works, with which he was well acquainted. They, on their part, had never met a listener more sympathetic, a critic more acute. Chandrapál left upon them the impression of his immense capacity for assimilating the products of Western thought; also the belief that they had thoroughly rifled his brains.

Meanwhile he was thinking thus within himself: "These men are keepers of shops, like the rest of their nation. Their merchandise is the thoughts of God, which they defile with wordy traffic, understanding them not. They have no reverence for their masters; their souls are poisoned with self; therefore the Light is not in them, and they know not the good from the evil. The word of the Truth is on their lips, but it lives not in their hearts. Moreover, they are robbers; and even as their fathers stole my country so they would capture the secrets of my soul--that they may sell them for money and increase their traffic. But to none such shall the treasure be given. I will walk with them in the outer courts; but the innermost chamber they shall not so much as see."

With the Cabinet Minister Chandrapál had this in common--that both were lawyers and servants of the Crown. Thus a basis of intercourse was established--were it only in the fact that each man understood the official reserve of the other. The first day of their acquaintance was passed by each in reconnoitring the other's position and deciding on a plan of campaign. The Minister concluded that there were three burning topics which it would be unwise to discuss with Chandrapál. Chandrapál perceived what these topics were, knew the Minister's reasons for avoiding them, and reflected with some satisfaction that they were matters on which he also had no desire to talk. His real object was to penetrate the Minister's mind in quite another direction, and he saw that this astute diplomatist had not the slightest suspicion of what he was after. This, of course, gave the tactical advantage to the Indian.