The Crock of Gold
Page 6
"I have often fancied," he continued to Pan, whom he was now confronting, "that the effect of clothing on mind must be very considerable, and that it must have a modifying rather than an expanding effect, or, even, an intensifying as against an exuberant effect. With clothing the whole environment is immediately affected. The air, which is our proper medium, is only filtered to our bodies in an abated and niggardly fashion which can scarcely be as beneficial as the generous and unintermitted elemental play. The question naturally arises whether clothing is as unknown to nature as we have fancied? Viewed as a protective measure against atmospheric rigour we find that many creatures grow, by their own central impulse, some kind of exterior panoply which may be regarded as their proper clothing. Bears, cats, dogs, mice, sheep and beavers are wrapped in fur, hair, fell, fleece or pelt, so these creatures cannot by any means be regarded as being naked. Crabs, cockroaches, snails and cockles have ordered around them a crusty habiliment, wherein their original nakedness is only to be discovered by force, and other creatures have similarly provided themselves with some species of covering. Clothing, therefore, is not an art, but an instinct, and the fact that man is born naked and does not grow his clothing upon himself from within but collects it from various distant and haphazard sources is not any reason to call this necessity an instinct for decency. These, you will admit, are weighty reflections and worthy of consideration before we proceed to the wide and thorny subject of moral and immoral action. Now, what is virtue?"—
Pan, who had listened with great courtesy to these remarks, here broke in on the Philosopher.
"Virtue," said he, "is the performance of pleasant actions."
The Philosopher held the statement for a moment on his forefinger.
"And what, then, is vice?" said he.
"It is vicious," said Pan, "to neglect the performance of pleasant actions."
"If this be so," the other commented, "philosophy has up to the present been on the wrong track."
"That is so," said Pan. "Philosophy is an immoral practice because it suggests a standard of practice impossible of being followed, and which, if it could be followed, would lead to the great sin of sterility."
"The idea of virtue," said the Philosopher, with some indignation, "has animated the noblest intellects of the world."
"It has not animated them," replied Pan, "it has hypnotised them so that they have conceived virtue as repression and self-sacrifice as an honourable thing instead of the suicide which it is."
"Indeed," said the Philosopher, "this is very interesting, and if it is true the whole conduct of life will have to be very much simplified."
"Life is already very simple," said Pan, "it is to be born and to die, and in the interval to eat and drink, to dance and sing, to marry and beget children."
"But it is simply materialism," cried the Philosopher.
"Why do you say 'but'?" replied Pan.
"It is sheer, unredeemed animalism," continued his visitor.
"It is any name you please to call it," replied Pan.
"You have proved nothing," the Philosopher shouted.
"What can be sensed requires no proof."
"You leave out the new thing," said the Philosopher. "You leave out brains. I believe in mind above matter. Thought above emotion. Spirit above flesh."
"Of course you do," said Pan, and he reached for his oaten pipe.
The Philosopher ran to the opening of the passage and thrust Caitilin aside. "Hussy," said he fiercely to her, and he darted out.
As he went up the rugged path, he could hear the pipes of Pan, calling and sobbing and making high merriment on the air.
CHAPTER XI
"She does not deserve to be rescued," said the Philosopher, "but I will rescue her. Indeed," he thought a moment later, "she does not want to be rescued, and, therefore, I will rescue her."
As he went down the road her shapely figure floated before his eyes as beautiful and simple as an old statue. He wagged his head angrily at the apparition, but it would not go away. He tried to concentrate his mind on a deep, philosophical maxim, but her disturbing image came between him and his thought, blotting out the latter so completely that a moment after he had stated his aphorism he could not remember what it had been. Such a condition of mind was so unusual that it bewildered him.
"Is a mind, then, so unstable," said he, "that a mere figure, an animated geometrical arrangement can shake it from its foundations?"
The idea horrified him: he saw civilisation building its temples over a volcano. . . .
"A puff," said he, "and it is gone. Beneath all is chaos and red anarchy, over all a devouring and insistent appetite. Our eyes tell us what to think about, and our wisdom is no more than a catalogue of sensual stimuli."
He would have been in a state of deep dejection were it not that through his perturbation there bubbled a stream of such amazing well-being as he had not felt since childhood. Years had toppled from his shoulders. He left one pound of solid matter behind at every stride. His very skin grew flexuous, and he found a pleasure in taking long steps such as he could not have accounted for by thought. Indeed, thought was the one thing he felt unequal to, and it was not precisely that he could not think but that he did not want to. All the importance and authority of his mind seemed to have faded away, and the activity which had once belonged to that organ was now transferred to his eyes. He saw, amazedly, the sunshine bathing the hills and the valleys. A bird in the hedge held him—beak, head, eyes, legs, and the wings that tapered widely at angles to the wind. For the first time in his life he really saw a bird, and one minute after it had flown away he could have reproduced its strident note. With every step along the curving road the landscape was changing. He saw and noted it almost in an ecstasy. A sharp hill jutted out into the road, it dissolved into a sloping meadow, rolled down into a valley and then climbed easily and peacefully into a hill again. On this side a clump of trees nodded together in the friendliest fashion. Yonder a solitary tree, well-grown and clean, was contented with its own bright company. A bush crouched tightly on the ground as though, at a word, it would scamper from its place and chase rabbits across the sward with shouts and laughter. Great spaces of sunshine were everywhere, and everywhere there were deep wells of shadow; and the one did not seem more beautiful than the other. That sunshine! Oh, the glory of it, the goodness and bravery of it, how broadly and grandly it shone, without stint, without care; he saw its measureless generosity and gloried in it as though himself had been the flinger of that largesse. And was he not? Did the sunlight not stream from his head and life from his finger tips? Surely the well-being that was in him did bubble out to an activity beyond the universe. Thought! Oh! the petty thing! but motion! emotion! these were the realities. To feel, to do, to stride forward in elation chanting a pæan of triumphant life!
After a time he felt hungry, and thrusting his hand into his wallet he broke off a piece of one of his cakes and looked about for a place where he might happily eat it. By the side of the road there was a well; just a little corner filled with water. Over it was a rough stone coping, and around, hugging it on three sides almost from sight, were thick, quiet bushes. He would not have noticed the well at all but for a thin stream, the breadth of two hands, which tiptoed away from it through a field. By this well he sat down and scooped the water in his hand and it tasted good.
He was eating his cake when a sound touched his ear from some distance, and shortly a woman came down the path carrying a vessel in her hand to draw water. She was a big, comely woman, and she walked as one who had no misfortunes and no misgivings. When she saw the Philosopher sitting by the well she halted a moment in surprise and then came forward with a good-humoured smile.
"Good morrow to you, sir," said she.
"Good morrow to you too, ma'am," replied the Philosopher. "Sit down beside me here and eat some of my cake."
"Why wouldn't I, indeed?" said the woman, and she did sit beside him.
The Philosopher cracked a large piece
off his cake and gave it to her and she ate some.
"There's a taste on that cake," said she. "Who made it?"
"My wife did," he replied.
"Well, now!" said she, looking at him. "Do you know, you don't look a bit like a married man."
"No?" said the Philosopher.
"Not a bit. A married man looks comfortable and settled: he looks finished, if you understand me, and a bachelor looks unsettled and funny, and he always wants to be running round seeing things. I'd know a married man from a bachelor any day."
"How would you know that?" said the Philosopher.
"Easily," said she, with a nod. "It's the way they look at a woman. A married man looks at you quietly as if he knew all about you. There isn't any strangeness about him with a woman at all; but a bachelor man looks at you very sharp and looks away and then looks back again, the way you'd know he was thinking about you and didn't know what you were thinking about him; and so they are always strange, and that's why women like them."
"Why!" said the Philosopher, astonished, "do women like bachelors better than married men?"
"Of course they do," she replied heartily. "They wouldn't look at the side of the road a married man was on if there was a bachelor man on the other side."
"This," said the Philosopher earnestly, "is very interesting."
"And the queer thing is," she continued, "that when I came up the road and saw you I said to myself 'it's a bachelor man.' How long have you been married, now?"
"I don't know," said the Philosopher. "Maybe it's ten years."
"And how many children would you have, mister?"
"Two," he replied, and then corrected himself, "no, I have only one."
"Is the other one dead?"
"I never had more than one."
"Ten years married and only one child," said she. "Why, man dear, you're not a married man. What were you doing at all, at all! I wouldn't like to be telling you the children I have living and dead. But what I say is that married or not you're a bachelor man. I knew it the minute I looked at you. What sort of a woman is herself?"
"She's a thin sort of woman," said the Philosopher, biting into his cake.
"Is she now?"
"And," the Philosopher continued, "the reason I talked to you is because you are a fat woman."
"I am not fat," was her angry response.
"You are fat," insisted the Philosopher, "and that's the reason I like you."
"Oh, if you mean it that way . . ." she chuckled.
"I think," he continued, looking at her admiringly, "that women ought to be fat."
"Tell you the truth," said she eagerly, "I think that myself. I never met a thin woman but she was a sour one, and I never met a fat man but he was a fool. Fat women and thin men; it's nature," said she.
"It is," said he, and he leaned forward and kissed her eye.
"Oh, you villain!" said the woman, putting out her hands against him.
The Philosopher drew back abashed.
"Forgive me," he began, "if I have alarmed your virtue—"
"It's the married man's word," said she, rising hastily: "now I know you; but there's a lot of the bachelor in you all the same, God help you! I'm going home." And, so saying, she dipped her vessel in the well and turned away.
"Maybe," said the Philosopher, "I ought to wait until your husband comes home and ask his forgiveness for the wrong I've done him."
The woman turned round on him and each of her eyes was as big as a plate.
"What do you say?" said she. "Follow me if you dare and I'll set the dog on you; I will so," and she strode viciously homewards.
After a moment's hesitation the Philosopher took his own path across the hill.
The day was now well advanced, and as he trudged forward the happy quietude of his surroundings stole into his heart again and so toned down his recollection of the fat woman that in a little time she was no more than a pleasant and curious memory. His mind was exercised superficially, not in thinking, but in wondering how it was he had come to kiss a strange woman. He said to himself that such conduct was not right: but this statement was no more than the automatic working of a mind long exercised in the distinctions of right and wrong, for, almost in the same breath, he assured himself that what he had done did not matter in the least. His opinions were undergoing a curious change. Right and wrong were meeting and blending together so closely that it became difficult to dissever them, and the obloquy attaching to the one seemed out of proportion altogether to its importance, while the other by no means justified the eulogy wherewith it was connected. Was there any immediate, or even distant, effect on life caused by evil which was not instantly swung into equipoise by goodness? But these slender reflections troubled him only for a little time. He had little desire for any introspective quarryings. To feel so well was sufficient in itself. Why should thought be so apparent to us, so insistent? We do not know we have digestive or circulatory organs until these go out of order, and then the knowledge torments us. Should not the labours of a healthy brain be equally subterranean and equally competent? Why have we to think aloud and travel laboriously from syllogism to ergo, chary of our conclusions and distrustful of our premises? Thought, as we know it, is a disease and no more. The healthy mentality should register its convictions and not its labours. Our ears should not hear the clamour of its doubts nor be forced to listen to the pro and con wherewith we are eternally badgered and perplexed.
The road was winding like a ribbon in and out of the mountains. On either side there were hedges and bushes. Little, stiff trees which held their foliage in their hands and dared the winds snatch a leaf from that grip. The hills were swelling and sinking, folding and soaring on every view. Now the silence was startled by the falling tinkle of a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or a goat's call trembled from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small, winged life. Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient, stamping vigorously as he trod, almost snorting like a bull in the pride of successful energy. Coming down the slope he braced back and let his legs loose to do as they pleased. Didn't they know their business?—Good luck to them, and away!
As he walked along he saw an old woman hobbling in front of him. She was leaning on a stick and her hand was red and swollen with rheumatism. She hobbled by reason of the fact that there were stones in her shapeless boots. She was draped in the sorriest, miscellaneous rags that could be imagined, and these were knotted together so intricately that her clothing, having once been attached to her body, could never again be detached from it. As she walked she was mumbling and grumbling to herself, so that her mouth moved round and round in an india-rubber fashion.
The Philosopher soon caught up on her.
"Good morrow, ma'am," said he.
But she did not hear him: she seemed to be listening to the pain which the stones in her boots gave her.
"Good morrow, ma'am," said the Philosopher again.
This time she heard him and replied, turning her old, bleared eyes slowly in his direction—
"Good morrow to yourself, sir," said she, and the Philosopher thought her old face was a very kindly one.
"What is it that is wrong with you, ma'am?" said he.
"It's my boots, sir," she replied. "Full of stones they are, the way I can hardly walk at all, God help me!"
"Why don't you shake them out?"
"Ah, sure, I couldn't be bothered, sir, for there are so many holes in the boots that more would get in before I could take two steps, and an old woman can't be always fidgeting, God help her!"
There was a little house on one side of the road, and when the old woman saw this place she brightened up a little.
"Do you know who lives in that house?" said the Philosopher.
"I do not," she replied, "but it's a real nice house with clean windows and a shiny knocker on the door, and smoke in the chimney—I wonder would herself give me a cup of tea now if I asked her—A
poor old woman walking the roads on a stick! and maybe a bit of meat, or an egg perhaps . . ."
"You could ask," suggested the Philosopher gently.
"Maybe I will, too," said she, and she sat down by the road just outside the house and the Philosopher also sat down.
A little puppy dog came from behind the house and approached them cautiously. Its intentions were friendly, but it had already found that amicable advances are sometimes indifferently received, for, as it drew near, it wagged its dubious tail and rolled humbly on the ground. But very soon the dog discovered that here there was no evil, for it trotted over to the old woman, and without any more preparation jumped into her lap.
The old woman grinned at the dog—
"Ah, you thing you!" said she, and she gave it her finger to bite. The delighted puppy chewed her bony finger, and then instituted a mimic warfare against a piece of rag that fluttered from her breast, barking and growling in joyous excitement, while the old woman fondled and hugged it.
The door of the house opposite opened quickly, and a woman with a frost-bitten face came out.
"Leave that dog down," said she.
The old woman grinned humbly at her.
"Sure, ma'am, I wouldn't hurt the little dog, the thing!"
"Put down that dog," said the woman, "and go about your business—the likes of you ought to be arrested."
A man in shirt sleeves appeared behind her, and at him the old woman grinned even more humbly.
"Let me sit here for a while and play with the little dog, sir," said she, "sure the roads do be lonesome—"
The man stalked close and grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck. It hung between his finger and thumb with its tail tucked between its legs, and its eyes screwed round on one side in amazement.
"Be off with you out of that, you old strap!" said the man in a terrible voice.
So the old woman rose painfully to her feet again, and as she went hobbling along the dusty road she began to cry.
The Philosopher also arose, he was very indignant, but did not know what to do. A singular lassitude also prevented him from interfering. As they paced along his companion began mumbling, more to herself than to him—