Part 17

Even if I did not share the general incurious apathy towards the mysterious people, I should not blame that apathy, for it is so widespread that there must be some human explanation of it; my object is merely to point it out. But I share it. I lived half my life among coalpits. I never got up in the morning without seeing the double wheels at a neighbouring pit-head spin silently in opposite directions for a time, and then stop, and then begin again. I was accustomed to see coal and ironstone, not in tons, but in thousands of tons. I have been close to colliery disasters so enormous that the ambitious local paper would make special reporters of the whole of its staff, and give up to the affair the whole of its space, save a corner for the betting news. My district lives half by earthenware and half by mining. I have often philandered with pot-workers, but I have never felt a genuine, active curiosity about the mysterious people. I have never been down a coalpit, though the galleries are now white-washed and lighted by electricity. It has never occurred to me to try to write a novel about the real price of coal.

*****

And yet how powerfully suggestive the glimpses I have had! Down there, on my heath, covered with a shuttle-work of trams, you may get on to a car about four o’clock in the afternoon to pay a visit, and you may observe a handful of silent, formidable men in the car, a greyish-yellowish-black from head to foot. Like Eugene Stratton, they are black everywhere, except the whites of their eyes. You ask yourself what these begrimed creatures that touch nothing without soiling it are doing abroad at four o’clock in the afternoon, seeing that men are not usually unyoked till six.

They have an uncanny air, especially when you reflect that there is not one arm among them that could not stretch you out with one blow. Then you remember that they have been buried in geological strata probably since five o’clock that morning, and that the sky must look strange to them.

Or you may be walking in the appalling outskirts, miles from town halls and free libraries, but miles also from flowers, and you may see a whole procession of these silent men, encrusted with carbon and perspiration, a perfect pilgrimage of them, winding its way over a down where the sparse grass is sooty and the trees are withered. And then you feel that you yourself are the exotic stranger in those regions. But the procession absolutely ignores you. You might not exist. It goes on, absorbed, ruthless, and sinister. Your feeling is that if you got in its path it would tramp right over you. And it passes out of sight.

Around, dotting the moors, are the mining villages, withdrawn, self-centred, where the entire existence of the community is regulated by a single steam-siren, where good fortune and ill-fortune are common, and where the disaster of one is the disaster of all. Little is known of the life of these villages and townlets--known, that is, by people capable of imaginative external sympathetic comprehension. And herein is probably a reason why the mysterious people remain so mysterious. They live physically separated. A large proportion of them never mingle with the general mass. They are not sufficiently seen of surface-men to maintain curiosity concerning them. They keep themselves to themselves, and circumstances so keep them. Only at elections do they seem to impinge in powerful silence on the destinies of the nation.

I have visited some of these villages. I have walked over the moors to them with local preachers, and heard them challenge God. I have talked to doctors and magistrates about them, and acquired the certainty, vague and yet vivid, that in religion, love, work, and debauch they are equally violent and splendid. It needs no insight to perceive that they live nearer even than sailors to that central tract of emotion where life and death meet. But I have never sympathetically got near them. And I don’t think I ever shall.

Once I was talking to a man whose father, not himself a miner, had been the moral chieftain of one of these large villages, the individuality to which everyone turned in doubt or need. And I was getting this man to untap the memories of his childhood. “Eh!” he said, “I remember how th’ women used to come to my mother sometimes of a night, and beg, ‘Mrs. B., an’ ye got any old white shirts to spare? They’re bringing ’em up, and we mun lay ’em out!’ And I remember--” But just then he had to leave me, and I obtained no more. But what a glimpse!

III--FIRST VOYAGE TO THE ISLE OF MAN

It seemed solid enough. I leaned for an instant over the rail on the quarter away from the landing-stage, and there, at the foot of the high precipice formed by the side of the vessel, was the wavy water. A self-important, self-confident man standing near me lighted a black cigar of unseemly proportions, and threw the match into the water. The match was lost at once in the waves, which far below beat up futilely against the absolutely unmoved precipice. I had never been on such a large steamer before. I said to myself: “This is all right.”

However, that was not the moment to go into ecstasies over the solidity of the steamer. I had to secure a place for myself. Hundreds of people on the illimitable deck were securing places for themselves. And many of them were being aided by porters or mariners. The number of people seemed to exceed the number of seats; it certainly exceeded the number of nice sheltered corners. I picked up my portmanteau with one hand and my bag and my sticks and my rug with the other. Then I dropped the portmanteau. A portmanteau has the peculiar property of possessing different weights. You pick it up in your bedroom, and it seems a feather. You say to yourself: “I can carry that easily--save tips to porters.” But in a public place its weight changes for the worse with every yard you walk. At twenty yards it weighs half a ton. At forty yards no steam-crane could support it. You drop it. Besides, the carrying of it robs your movements of all grace and style. Well, I had carried that bag myself from the cab to the steamer, across the landing-stage, and up the gangway. Economy! I had spent a shilling on a useless magazine, and I grudged three pence to a porter with a wife and family! I was wearing a necktie whose price represented the upkeep of the porter and his wife and family for a full twenty-four hours, and yet I wouldn’t employ the porter to the tune of threepence. Economy! These thoughts flashed through my head with the rapidity of lightning.

You see, I could not skip about for a deck-chair with that portmanteau in my hand. But if I left it lying on the deck, which was like a street... well, thieves, professional thieves, thieves who specialise in departing steamers! They nip off with your things while you are looking for a chair; the steamer bell sounds; and there you are! Nevertheless, I accepted the horrid risk and left all my belongings in the middle of the street.

*****

Not a free chair, not a red deck-chair, not a corner! There were seats by the rail at one extremity of the boat, and at the other extremity of the boat, but no chair to be had. Thousands of persons reclining in chairs, and thousands of others occupied by bags, fugs, and bonnet-boxes, but no empty chair.

“Want a deck-chair, governor?” a bearded mariner accosted me.

Impossible to conceal from him that I did. But, being perhaps the ship’s carpenter, was he going to manufacture a chair for me on the spot? I knew not how he did it, but in about thirty seconds he produced a chair out of the entrails of the ship, and fixed it for me in a beautiful situation, just forward of the funnel, and close to a charming young woman, and a little deck-house in front for protection! It was exactly what I wanted; the most stationary part of the entire vessel.

Sixpence! Economy! Still, I couldn’t give him less. Moreover, I only had two pence in coppers.

“What will the voyage be like?” I asked him with false jollity, as he touched his cap.

“Grand, sir!” he replied enthusiastically.

Yes, and if I had given him a shilling the voyage would have been the most magnificent and utterly perfect voyage that ship ever made.

No sooner was I comfortably installed in that almost horizontal deck-chair than I was aware of a desire to roam about, watch the casting-off and the behaviour of the poor stay-at-home crowd on the landing-stage; a very keen desire. But I would not risk the portmanteau again. Nothing should part us till the gangways were withdrawn. Absurd, of course! Human nature is absurd.... I caught the charming young woman’s eye about a dozen times. The ship got fuller and fuller. With mean and paltry joy I perceived other passengers seeking for chairs and not finding them, and I gazed at them with haughty superiority. Then a fiendish, an incredible, an appalling screech over my head made me jump in a silly way quite unworthy of a man who is reclining next to a charming young woman, and apt to prejudice him in her eyes. It was merely the steamer announcing that we were off. I. sprang up, trying to make the spring seem part of the original jump. I looked. And lo! The whole landing-stage with all the people and horses and cabs was moving backwards, floating clean away; while the enormous ship stood quite still! A most singular effect!

*****

In a minute we were in the middle of the river, and my portmanteau was safe. I left it in possession of the chair.

The next strange phenomenon of my mental condition was an extraordinary curiosity in regard to the ship. I had to explore it. I had to learn all about it. I began counting the people on the deck, but soon after I had come to the man with the unseemly black cigar I lost count. Then I went downstairs. There seemed to be staircases all over the place. You could scarcely move without falling down a staircase. And I came to another deck also full of people and bags, and fitted with other staircases that led still lower. And on the sloping ceiling of one of these lower staircases I saw the Board of Trade certificate of the ship. A most interesting document. It gave the tonnage as 2,000, and the legal number of passengers as about the same; and it said there were over two thousand life-belts on board, and room on the eight boats for I don’t remember how many shipwrecked voyagers. It even gave the captain’s Christian name. You might think that this would slake my curiosity. But, no! It urged me on. Lower down--somewhere near the caverns at the bottom of the sea, I came across marble halls, upholstered in velvet, where at snowy tables people were unconcernedly eating steaks and drinking tea. I said to myself “At such and such an hour I will come down here and have tea. It will break the monotony of the voyage.” Looking through the little round windows of the restaurant I saw strips of flying green.

Then I thought: “The engines!” And somehow the word “reciprocating” came into my mind. I really must go and see the engines reciprocate. I had never seen anything reciprocate, except possibly my Aunt Hilda at the New Year, when she answered my letter of good wishes. I discovered that many other persons had been drawn down towards the engine-room by the attraction of the spectacle of reciprocity. And as a spectacle it was assuredly majestic, overwhelming, and odorous. I must learn the exact number of times those engines reciprocated in a minute, and I took out my watch for the purpose. Other gazers at once did the same. It seemed to be a matter of the highest importance that we should know the precise speed of those engines. Then I espied a large brass plate which appeared to have been affixed to the engine room in order to inform the engineers that the ship was built by Messrs. Macconochie and Sons, of Dumbarton. Why Dumbarton? Why not Halifax? And why must this precious information always be staring the engineers in the face? I wondered whether “Sons” were married, and, if so, what the relations were between Sons’ wives and old Mrs. Macconochie. Then, far down, impossibly far down, furlongs beneath those gesticulating steely arms, I saw a coalpit on fire and demons therein with shovels. And all of a sudden it occurred to me that I might as well climb up again to my own special deck.

*****

I did so. The wind blew my hat off, my hat ran half-way up the street before I could catch it. I caught it and clung to the rail. We were just passing a lightship; the land was vague behind; in front there was nothing but wisps of smoke here and there. Then I saw a fishing-smack, tossing like anything; its bows went down into the sea and then jerked themselves fairly out of the sea, and this process went on and on and on. And although I was not aboard the smack, it disconcerted me. However, I said to myself, “How glad I am to be on a nice firm steamer, instead of on that smack!” I looked at my watch again. We seemed to have been away from England about seven days, but it was barely three-quarters of an hour. The offensive man with the cigar went swaggering by. And then a steward came up out of the depths of the sea with a tray full of glasses of beer, and a group of men lolling in deck chairs started to drink this beer. I cared not for the sight. I said to myself, “I will go and sit down.” And as I stepped forward the deck seemed to sink away ever so slightly. A trifle! Perhaps a delusion on my part! Surely nothing so solid as that high road of a deck could sink away! Having removed my portmanteau from my chair, I sat down. The charming girl was very pale, with eyes closed. Possibly asleep I Many people had the air of being asleep. Every chair was now occupied. Still, dozens of boastful persons were walking to and fro, pretending to have the easy sea-legs of Lord Charles Beresford. The man with the atrocious cigar (that is, another atrocious cigar) swung by. Hateful individual! “You wait a bit!” I said to him (in my mind). “You’ll see!”

I, too, shut my eyes, keeping very still. A grand voyage! Certainly, a grand voyage! Then I woke up. I had been asleep. It was tea-time. But I would not have descended to that marble restaurant for ten thousand pounds. For the first time I was indifferent to tea in the afternoon. However, after another quarter of an hour, I had an access of courage. I rose. I walked to the rail. The horizon was behaving improperly. I saw that I had made a mistake. But I dared not move. To move would have been death. I clung to the rail. There was my chair five yards off, but as inaccessible as if it had been five miles off. Years passed. Pale I must have been, but I retained my dignity. More years rolled by. Then, by accident, I saw what resembled a little cloud on the horizon.

It was the island! The mere sight of the island gave me hope and strength, and cheek.

In half an hour--you will never guess it--I was lighting a cigarette, partly for the benefit of the charming young woman, and partly to show that offensive man with the cigars that he was not the Shah of Persia. He had not suffered. Confound him!

IV--THE ISLAND BOARDING-HOUSE

When you first take up your brief residence in the private hotel, as they term it--though I believe it is still called boarding-house in the plain-spoken island--your attitude towards your fellow-guests is perfectly clear; I mean your secret attitude, of course. Your secret attitude is that you have got among a queer and an unsympathetic set of people. At the first meal--especially if it be breakfast--you glance at them all one by one out of the corners of your eyes, and in that shrewd way of yours you add them up (being a more than average experienced judge of human nature), and you come to the conclusion that you have seldom, if ever, encountered such a series of stupid and harsh faces. The men seem heavy, if not greedy, and sunk in mental sloth. And, really, the women might have striven a little harder to avoid resembling guys. After all, it is the duty of educated people not to offend the gaze of their fellow-creatures. And as for eating, do these men, in fact, live for naught but eating? Here are perhaps fifty or sixty immortal souls, and their unique concern, their united concern, seems to be the gross satisfaction of the body. Perhaps they do not have enough to eat at home, you reflect ironically. And you also reflect that some people, when they have contracted for bed and full board at so much per day, become absolutely lost to all sense of scruple, all sense of what is nice, and would, if they could, eat the unfortunate landlord right into the bankruptcy court. Look at that man there, near the window--doubtless, he obtained his excellent place near the window by the simple, colonizing method of grabbing it--well, he has already apportioned to himself four Manx herrings, and now, with his mouth full, he is mumbling about eggs and flesh meat.

And then their conversation! How dull!--how lacking in point, in originality! These unhappy people appear to have in their heads no ideas that are not either trivial, tedious, or merely absurd. They do not appear to be interested in any matters that could interest a reasonable man. They babble, saying over and over again the same things. Or if they do not babble they giggle, or they may do both, which is worse; and, indeed, the uproarious way in which some of them laugh, upon no sufficient provocation, is disagreeable, especially in a woman. Or, if they neither babble, giggle, nor deafen the room with their outrageous mirth, they sit glum, speaking not a word, glowering upon humanity. How English that is--and how rude!

Commonplace--‘that is what these people are! It is not their fault, but it is nevertheless a pity; and you resent it. Indubitably you are not in a sympathetic environment; you are not among kindred spirits. You grow haughty, within. When two late comers enter breezily and take seats near to you, and one of them begins at once by remarking that he is going to Port Erin for the day, and asks you if you know Port Erin, you reply “No”; the fact being that you have visited Port Erin, but the fact also being that you shirk the prospect of a sustained conversation with any of these too commonplace, uncomprehending strangers.

You rise and depart from the table, and you endeavour to make your exit as majestic as possible; but there is a suspicion in your mind that your exit is only sheepish.

You meet someone on the stairs, a woman less like a guy than those you have seen, and still youthful. As you are going upstairs and she is coming down, and the two of you are staying in the same house, you wonder whether it would not be well to greet her. A simple “Good-morning.” You argue about this in your head for some ten years--it is only in reality three seconds, but it seems eternal. You feel it would be nice to say good-morning to her. But at the critical point, at the psychological moment, a hard feeling comes into your heart, and a glazed blind look into your eyes, and you glance away. You perceive that she is staring straight in front of her; you perceive that she is deliberately cutting you. And so the two of you pass like ships in the night, and yet not quite like ships in the night, because ships do not hate, detest, and despise.

You go out into the sunshine (if sunshine there happens to be), between the plash of the waves and the call of the boatman on the right hand, and the front doors of all the other boarding-houses on the left, and you see that the other boarding-houses are frequented by a much superior, smarter, more intelligent, better-mannered set of pleasure-seekers than yours. You feel by a sure premonition that you are in for a dull time.

*****

Nothing occurs for about forty-eight terrible hours, during which time, with the most strict propriety, you behave as though the other people in the boarding-house did not exist. On several occasions you have meant to exchange a few words with this individual or that, but this individual or that has not been encouraging, has made no advance. And you are the last person to risk a rebuff. You are sensitive, like all fine minds, to a degree which this coarse clay in the boarding-house cannot conceive.

Then one afternoon something occurs. It usually does occur in the afternoon. You are in the tram-car. About ten others are in the tram-car. And among them you notice the man who put a pistol to your head at the first meal and asked you if you knew Port Erin; also the young woman who so arrogantly pretended that she did not see you on the stairs. They are together. You had an idea they were together in the boarding-house; but you were not sure, because they seldom arrived in the dining-room together, or left it together, and both of them did a great deal of talking to other people. Of course, you might have asked, but the matter did not interest you; besides, you hate to seem inquisitive. He is considerably older than she is; a hale, jolly, red-faced, grey bearded man, who probably finds it easier to catch sight of his watch-chain than of his toes. She is slim, and a little arch. If she is his wife the difference between their ages is really excessive.

The car in its passage gradually empties until there is nobody in it save you and the conductor on the platform and these two inside. And a minute before it reaches the end of its journey the man opens his cigar-case, and preparing a cigar for the sacrificial burning, strolls along the car to the platform.

“We’re the last on the car,” he says, between two puffs, and not very articulately.

“Yes,” you say. It is indubitable that you are the last on the car. You needed nobody to tell you that. Still, the information gives you pleasure, and the fellow is rather jolly. So you add, amiably, “I suppose it’s these electric motors that are giving the tram-cars beans.”

He laughs. He evidently thinks you have expressed yourself in an amusing manner.

And inspecting the scarlet end of his cigar, he says in a low voice: “I hope you’re right. I’ve just bought a packet of shares in that motor company.”

“Really!” you exclaim. So he is a shareholder, a member of the investing public! You are impressed. Instantly you imagine him as a very wealthy man who knows how to look after his money, and who has a hawk’s eye for “a good thing.” You wish you had loose money that would enable you to pick up a casual “packet of shares” here and there.

The car stops. The lady gets out. You raise your hat; it is the least you can do. Instead of pretending that you are empty air, she smiles on you charmingly, almost anxiously polite (perhaps she wants to make up for having cut you on the stairs), and offers you some remark about the weather, a banal remark, but so prettily enveloped in tissue paper and tied with pink ribbon, that you treasure it.

Your common home is only fifty yards off. Obviously you must reach it in company.

“My daughter here--” the grey-bearded man begins a remark.

So she is his daughter. Rather interesting. You talk freely, exposing all the most agreeable and polite side of your disposition.

*****

While preparing for dinner you reflect with satisfaction and joy that at last you are on friendly terms with somebody in the house. You anticipate the dinner with eagerness. You regard the father and daughter somewhat as palm trees in the desert. During dinner you talk to them a great deal, and insensibly you find yourself exchanging remarks with other guests.

They are not so bad as they seemed, perhaps. Anyhow, one ought to make the best of things.

*****