by F. W. Harvey
Howard remembered his own hard boyhood; and the sins of the fathers had this beneficial result, that they made him determined that such should not be visited upon the children to the third or fourth generation if he could help it.
No man was ever luckier in choosing a wife. Miss Waters, the daughter of a prosperous farmer in an adjoining county was one of those remarkable characters of which life shows more than books – and life few enough.
The reason is simple.
Good women are notoriously hard ‘to draw’.
This dark girl was a white magic against misfortune; a soothing finger upon all trembling evil strings … And her power increased as she grew older.
Anyone seeing her at the age of forty would have seen a rather far country-woman with a magnificent head. Having spoken to her he would have said, ‘a kind person’. Knowing her well he would have called her ‘a true saint’; – and so damned her.
For it is the misfortune of this age that nobody believes in saints, and that the word ‘good’ means ‘too good’. Very well then – she was ‘awfully jolly.’
She was good as the green earth is good, rather than as the yellow district visitor whose mouth is shaped to utter prunes and prisms – albeit biblical prunes, and prisms most holy.
And now gentle reader – if any – I will tell you (since it will take no more than a few seconds) why you sicken at the word ‘good’, and so, incidentally, put me to an unnecessary trouble.
It is for three reasons. Firstly, because the Victorians caused it to mean something it should not have meant – and never did mean. Secondly, because you think more of words than of things which lie behind them. And thirdly, because (pardon, gentle reader) you are a fool.
And with the same condescension, brother artist, I will tell you why your figures, and mine, are such measly little puppets. It is because virtue is too hard to draw, and too big.
Take Mrs. Harvey. Add to goodness, the calmness, the strength, the sweetness of old earth; perceive rather, that these are all included in it. What siege even of old age and disease can carry dramatic terror into that castle of nobleness? The outer faculties fallen, the senses dim, what can destiny put to reign over the inner court of wild flowers and perennial sunshine?
How is art’s little edging of line, and so careful disposition of light and shade to accomplish it, tell me?
I have said she was a good woman. Music may hint the meaning of that; still better perhaps, wild flowers, a nosegay of dark violets in spring; and later on, twined honeysuckle and old man’s beard. That was the effect she had on people.
Must I sink to the level of your popular novelist and tell you the shape of her nose, and what she wore? Very well, it was an English nose, and her clothes were English too. The whole lot was English.
So now we can get on … Hastily and insufficiently sketched, such were the parents of the little boys who had just been sent to school, at the time of their old grandfather’s last illness, thus to a reporter described by Trigg, periodically spitting upon the sanded floor of the ‘Five Alls.’
‘A wer never the same since the red bull tossed ‘un up. ‘Twas a quiet beast, but all things do have their natur’, and will till the world be drowned flat once more again. As ‘a pushed horns a got savager. A chased Tater Baggit dro a hedge – a did. But most and gener’ly old Master could do anything wi’ un, and so a would never believe as ‘twer true. “Tater Baggit,” a laughed, “Tater Baggit ‘ud run, the winnocking creatur, from the crows I pays ‘un to scare away, if they had the thought to craw at un all together.”
I wer born too nigh a “ood to be afeared of owls” – a said. And out ‘a goes, wi’ his boots off too, and wearing his old red carpet slippers, to talk to the bull where a was grazing in the little paddock and scratch the curly front of his yud. And a come chuckling back. It were all right that time.
But when it come threshing season, then down at the next farm an engine starts up a-droning and a-bellowing and a-moaning, like a bee and a bull and old Sorrow all together. And believe me when the bull did hear that it put un into a fury. Maybe he thought it wer another bull ready to fight un. But whatever a thought, the maggotts o’ rage crawled up into a’s yud and round and round inside, and a swelled a-self out wi’ angry wind, and bellowed back most wonnerful.
And as t’other bull kep’ on same as before neither higher nor lower but boo-oo and moo-oo, and boo-oo again, a got madder and madder, and started to tear and paw the fence so as to get at un.
“Go and tell that damned thing to stop,” said the old Master, “we’ll get un in afore damage is done.” Tater Baggit went off as fast as his legs ‘ud take him, glad enough to be out ‘ont.
Then when they stopped, and nobody did move very fast to go drive un into the yard, why the old mon steps out like a did before, when a had the red slippers on – only now twas boots, being morning. “Come! Come! my dainty!” a called. And the bull came at un like a bolting star.
Whoick! over the hedge a went. Whop! a come down. And a didn’t waken for dree weekes. Then, “Bill Trigg, I bin dead,” a said to me, sat by un one day, “haven’t I, Bill?!”
“No, Master,” I said to ee.
“But I have!”
“When men have been dead, they don’t get up and talk about it,” says I.
“What about Jesus Christ?” a rapped out.
“Well, thee bisn’t ee,” I said.
But he damned and shouted so as t’wer’nt no use argying over it wi un, and so a went till the day a died, and didn’t speak no more.’ Bill drank reflectively from his mug …
‘That were some while later, as ye may know. But, as I say, a wer never the same mon since. Sometimes a would go and drive round a bit wi a slow quiet ’oss, and that wer’nt like un. A took to wear a read dressing gown, but a never left off the big white chimley hat, and a used to frighten them as met him in the lanes till they got to know who ‘twas.
‘At last a lay in the big bed upstairs and couldn’t see any o’the things a wanted to. A lay in the girt bed wi a roof on’t. And I did come and tell un about the farm and the beasts and what wer wi’em.
‘Master Howard, and the two little uns with their ma did come and talk to un too, but a liked me there best because I would tell ‘en what had calved and what hadn’t, and remind un o’ them vaur cattle o’ his as beat the world at the show in London; and (mind ye) the Prince o’ Wales himself said as a wer proud to meet un that day. “Don’t you mention it,” said he modest to the Prince.
‘Then one morn I came in and I seed at the foot o’ the bed on the shiny pole as ran along the bottom near the window, summat as made me stare – a robin, and the old mon un throwing crumbs to un.
“Master,’ I said, ‘don’t ee do’t.”
“Do what?” said he.
“Don’t ee courage thic bird to come in.”
“‘Why, I do like to see un,” he said,
“Well, I don’t.”
“Why?” a said then.
I up and told un, “It be a sign,” I said, “a sign as somebody be going to die.”
I didn’t say outright as t’wer e as wer meant. That would ha made un angry. But a died that night.’ Bill took another reflective sup from his replenished mug. ‘Course a did,’ he added.
***
‘The deceased had for some time been ailing consequent upon injury sustained earlier in the year when he had the misfortune to be gored by one of the cattle for which he was famous as a breeder throughout the country.’
Such was the transcription of Bill’s information by the reporter – Bill being illiterate.
CHAPTER V
‘O fair enough are sky and plain,
But I know fairer far;
Those are as beautiful again
That in the water are.’
It will be the lot of those who read through the first portion of this history to follow the development of two boys, the characters of whose parents have been hastily and perhaps insufficiently sketched,
from the atmosphere and environment of that rural existence and tradition which has occupied by reason of its paramount potency of influence the greater part of the preceding pages, into the adventure which were later on to befall them, and the world; tracing in doing so two distinct and widely different interpretations of that single energy projected by the old man whose death a reporter and Bill Trigg have described – the one in modern sixth standardised English, and the other merely in the rambling countrified tongue of William Shakespeare.
Nurtured by the parents, nourished by the country described and impelled by the dynamic force of that dead man, Willie has exhibited certain traits of character already recorded; but Eric, being two years younger, has of necessity shown but a blurred and baby outline.
This, ere the book of their early childhood is shut, must be remedied, and shall be, by means of the two following incidents both of which occurred while the boys were still running loose upon the farm just prior to their being sent to a small school.
Willie was then eight, and Eric six years of age.
But prior to a narration of these events, and in parenthesis it may avoid future argument to point out that the stream of human energy may manifest itself in activity, or in ecstacy. The same force may produce an Arctic discoverer or a contemplative mystic. It is therefore nothing to be wondered at if in the lives of these children its results are very different from those produced in the life of the grandfather from whom it is convenient to derive it, because to trace it back to God would involve considerable labour, and there is else no one so likely to accept and appreciate the compliment as that old gentleman …
The flash of two blue overalls now directs us to the green steep banks of a pond mentioned in Chapter I. As before, singing is heard. But tune and words are different. It was one of the hymns most frequently sung by the family on Sunday evenings:
‘All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small;
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God – He made all.’
The bright little tune was lustily sung by the smaller of the two boys. ‘I sing loud as ever I can for Jesus to hear’ Eric had amused them all by saying at the end of his last drawing-room performance. The slurring of the words showed that they were familiar enough to have been almost forgotten. He sang as the Catholic prays; gabbling the syllables, and forgetting them in the firm and central ‘intention’ which is all that matters. In other words he was devoid of all self-consciousness. It was natural religion in the true sense of the term – so natural that, ordinarily speaking, it was not religion at all. If he worshipped (as there is no doubt he did) he did so by spontaneous combustion: because the pool was lovely, and it was a happiness to sing – none of which need have been explained had people generally any understanding of children, or of religion.
He lay on his little stomach overlooking the water, and saw beneath him the swallow-wimpled surface; the water-weeds brilliantly ravelled; and below them yellow clay, and moss shrill-green; all cleaner, brighter, clearer, than any in the air; and again beyond, and infinitely deep, an exquisite and unfamiliar sky that mirrored in every detail the one above him, but added to it a remote and spiritual beauty never captured on earth.
The attitude was symbolic for (though this is to anticipate) it was one which he never abandoned his life through. And in symbolic fashion also was it temporally broken, as broken temporally it was destined to be through life. A long-drawn squeal which ended abruptly, and was renewed with a greater intensity and ear-piercing power; that, and Willie tugging at his stocking, withdrew his ecstatic attention.
‘Pig! – come on!’ cried his brother, setting off towards the yard at a run. And he arose and followed.
When they reached the place which lay two fields away, the preliminary and essential business (which was slaughter) had been accomplished. A great sprawling pool of bright and clotted blood caused Eric to shudder and whiten, but both he and Willie watched as though fascinated the carcass dragged away and singed in a bright flame of straw boltens.
The black and white bristles were then scraped off; and piggy looked, and sounded when thumped, like a hollow tree. Willie hit him to find out.
A pouch-mouthed man informed them that so far as his (that is the pig’s) inside was concerned it was just like a man’s; also that this animal (the pig) was the only one that didn’t bend his knees before going to sleep. ‘Horses do, and cattle do, and a praying man do, but a pig don’t’
He then pulled out yards and yards of intestine that squeaked. He told it out like a rope, and hung it over his arm. And Eric ran away.
Willie remained, though somewhat disgusted, and saw the white bladder given to Tater Baggit who had been taken on the farm after the death of his old master. And Tater and other lads, having inflated it, kicked it about the moon-lit meadows till it broke, and their play ended.
This is the first of two incidents in Eric’s childhood which alike by indelible impression upon him, and in view of those subsequent events of history that are the platform from which the writer must needs survey every incident to attain unity in the story – now seem to demand record.
The other shall be shortly dealt with. It is in reality a prank played by that ‘Something’ which frightened and bewildered the other little boy, and it may or may not be an allegory; but it happened, and it is just as simple to understand as the other was complex.
Were it written down apart from the events of this particular story and merely (as so it might be) as an allegorical essay, it should be called – ‘Truth’.
Lying in the darkness after he had gone to bed, and before he slept, Eric hated to feel any strange thing touch him. His whole nature funked it. Fear is generally the mother of anger, and it made him angry when a moth brushed his face with blundering wings. He wanted to kill it. That is just what happened on this particular night.
He lighted the candle and raised his hand. The moth remained quite still upon the pillow. Its two fan-like wings were extended and he noticed how precisely and beautifully they were barred. Only the two antennae kept swaying a little like branches in a wind.
PART II
SCHOOL DAYS
CHAPTER I
There is no subject upon which a writer can more easily and pleasurably ‘spread himself’ than – school days. Viewed retrospectively, here are high spirits, high hopes, inexperience, and adventure, standing enhanced in a haze of sentiment:– all the media of popular success. But we are concerned with the telling of a story.
What, seen solely from the story’s point of view, was the influence of that time upon the characters of these two boys?
The time was seven years. Ask the boys themselves and they would say – or rather have said – that it was the most important period of their lives. That means that they were more conscious of its influences – good and bad – than of any before or since. It means merely that.
From the observer’s standpoint – that is, from the view of their mother, the author, and the reader – what took place?
There took place a change in play, in manners, and in codes of ‘honour’ – the latter, in inverted commas!
Games, speech, and certain habits, were not different, but what (ask their mother), what underneath had altered? …
Breeding, and the first and freshest environment had done their work. Underneath the new games, the fresh habits, the revised vocabulary, the boys were the same. Mothers only will appreciate how much.
Their experience had merely made them – themselves. Only more so. Superficially they were absolutely different. Essentially, all that had happened to them was a hardening and developing of characteristics already their own.
Were it not for that hardening and that developing, this book would hold no account at all of their school-days.
These lucky little boys never had a governess: moreover the first school they went to wasn’t one. It was a spinster lady who kept house for her bachelor brother at an adjoining farm a
nd found the time dull; and they were her only pupils.
She was an accomplished woman, who taught beside the three Rs, music, wood-carving, a little natural history, and elementary history, geography and ‘English’.
Three things Willie learnt of her that he never forgot: Browning’s ‘Pied Piper’, Gray’s ‘Elegy’, and Shelley’s ‘Skylark’. He shared his father’s and grandfather’s memory – for what he liked. And even at the age of eight he like these.
It may be remarked that they were, especially the two last, queer poems for a child’s fancy, (one wonders also at the queer wisdom of the teacher as well) and there is no doubt that a full understanding of their beauties did not come till later. But an appreciation of the fuller beauties of art comes to grown-ups gradually too:– with repetition, and with pondering, and above all with the corroboration of life.
Life alone enforces such lines as these:–
‘We look before and after,
And pine for what is not.
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.’
Willie without (as God forefend) this larger realisation, liked the verses; and because he liked them he learned them; and because he learned and liked, never forgot them.
He learned also to carve a bellows for his mother, and to know the names and habits of certain common trees, insects, and wild flowers. And he learned to sing. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he embraced an officially sanctioned opportunity of doing something that he had always enjoyed doing. Song is essentially a natural, and not an acquired attribute. It has its technique like any other art, but the fact remains plainly expressed by one of our greatest artists that:– ‘The basis of all good singing is the desire to sing. Singing is, was, and always will be a joyous impulse. Without that, it may or may not be technique: it is not singing.