by H. F. Heard
Even when the raids began to sweep around and lash at us with their stinging tails, it only made stronger our sense of being together in something as worth while as getting people off a sinking ship. Yes, it was a fine atmosphere, but one that, because it was so high pitched, tended to use itself up. We were cheery but, of course, tense, and the tenseness grew. But, no doubt, you know all about that. It may be more to the point, then, to say about myself that I’d always been the moderately progressive civil servant. That is to say that, though of course I didn’t, and couldn’t, identify myself with any political opinion, I naturally was informed and I liked those parties and policies which preferred information. In short, had I been free to have what is called political affiliations, I should have been, I’m pretty sure, what was then still called Fabian of a sort: advance as far and as fast as the facts will take you and aim at getting the economic side of things well worked out, plan the lives of people for them as far as physical supplies go, and leave them free if they wish and as they wish to manage their psychological pleasures or problems. It’s a doctrine very sympathetic to minds trained to work with bluebooks, graphs, and properly tabulated returns. Inevitably you find you treat that as the whole of life and tend to leave aside its other sides as at best of purely private concern—and of very little to you, because you are, and are proud to be, a public servant.
The war rather crystallized what till then had been latent convictions with me. It made one able, and, indeed, of necessity drove one, to state one’s faith. I found that mine was in the triumph of a free socialism against a fanatical semimystical tyranny. Yet once we had settled down in our “watering place,” and indeed the war itself had begun to settle down as a fixture—for even destruction may become a habit just like hoarding—the strain of habitual strain passed, as it does, from elation to edginess. I know in me it showed in an increasing dislike of slogans. Naturally, they are necessary, but why must men take them as true? And then, again, why can’t men stand truth—hadn’t we a good enough case without making it out to be simpler than it was? Of course, this is the common reaction of lonely men when the first novelty of new friendship wears off. Add to that, I was now sufficiently high up to know the daily widening difference between propaganda statements and actual commitments. Of course most civil servants are prouder than they know of their secret power to debunk the headlines.
Anyhow, I began to find that I needed some solitude. I would do my long day’s and bit of the night’s work gladly, if grimly. But I could not keep up the club-boy spirit for the whole twenty-four hours. I was sufficiently high up to have a bedroom for myself but, like as not, as soon as one was up from supper someone would knock and ask one to take part in a singsong for convalescent troops or a really very unreal discussion of “Union Tomorrow.” I found myself longing for the dark that used to lie between my out-of-the-way empire office and my bungalow. It was when I found that my one chance of self-company was in taking new ways home from the crowded buildings in which we worked to our equally crowded lodging house at the other end of the town that I made my find. It was about my third trip in attempting circumnavigations. If you went at all directly you were accompanied. And the farther between the two doors of the office and the lodging the better. I had found that I could strike up from the further end of the sea front on which our hotel—as it used to be—stood. Then, going straight inland and following a small road up a combe, one could reach the head of it, cross the little pass on the low coastal range, and drop down the next combe, and so, with a fine stretch of some four miles, get home when, thank heaven, most people had already finished their supper.
I had struck off the lane that led up the floor of the combe and taken an even smaller path—hardly more than a bridle track—that led up onto the shoulder of the down. I was, in fact, just breasting the slope, and had found that there was another bridle path following the ridge of the down coming up from the sea, when I saw at the junction of these two paths a low building. The country was quite lonely up there. Everyone who came evidently wanted the sea, not the countryside. The last light was in the sky, for it was summer. The building first roused my curiosity mildly, for I wondered who could have placed it there. A glance showed that it was neither a residence nor a barn. A second showed an eye even as amateurishly archaeological as mine that it was a small church. But though it might be called a chapel, it certainly was not, as we say, “non-conformist.” Indeed, it was a genuine piece of the workmanship of what was once called the Old Religion.
I stopped and looked at it, now that I had come sufficiently close. Yes, it was undoubtedly a fine piece of small Norman work. Obviously it must have been restored, but the work had been sufficiently well done that I could not, in that light certainly, tell how much new work had been added to put it into the complete shape which it now held. It stood on the brow of the ridge where the two tracks crossed—one coming up the spine of the down from the sea and the other, which I was following, and which saddled over the back of the down and would lead me into the next combe. It must have been built when these two routes were in use.
The pull up the side of the hill had been steep; the air was mild and pleasant. I was a bit out of breath and glad to stand a moment, and used the moment to look at this rather unexpected piece of antiquity. Not since I was at college had I given any thought to ancient ecclesiastical architecture. It brought back those days rather pleasantly, to be scanning weather-eaten moldings, rough chevron-axwork, cushion-headed capitals, and those small, big-beaked corbel heads, which are the more vigorous and more minatory forms out of which the later sophisticated gargoyle was to grow. Yes, the gargoyle tried to be horrible; the romanesque corbel head often achieved suddenly a certain terror. It was as I was inventorying the little piece—the kind of little shrine a rich American might buy and put in his Hudson-side park—that I noticed a feature which might deserve the collector’s term “quaint.” There was no west door. Well, quite likely. But neither was there a south one. Yes, there was a door, but it was set—uniquely, to my rather out-of-date and never deep knowledge—in the southwest corner. A kind of bell cote rose and, in the shaft of this, which made a species of big chamfer of what would otherwise have been the southwest quoins, was a small door. I went up to see whether this was not an addition and no part of the original building. But, no, I could be certain of that. The small barrel arch with its simple but effective billet moldings was undoubtedly old stone and old work.
It was when I was examining to assure myself on this point that I found that the small door itself—of very weathered wood, weathered till its gray grain stood out like the veins and sinews and wrinkles on a nonagenarian’s hand—was unhasped. It stood ajar. I did not stop to ask how or why a small Norman chapel on a lane near a town would be left open at this hour but pushed it open and slipped in, just to see whether there would be enough light to tell me a little more about the building. There wasn’t. The entrance arch was thick—almost a small tunnel or section of a barrel vault. And, once inside, I had really almost to grope. I knew, though, when I’d emerged into the church proper, because there was a faint dusk coming down, I judged, from the kind of small, high-set, deep-splayed windows which are all such buildings have. I felt my way, and a bench end met my hand. I let myself down into what by the touch I knew for one of those massive medieval pews made of four-inch slabs of oak and as lasting almost as masonry. I settled into its firm but capacious hold. Those old carpenters didn’t think much of comfort. Nevertheless they knew whereof we are made, and the angle of the seat raked back, and the back also sloped, so putting the body, without any cosseting of cushions, into an attitude that could be kept for long without fidgeting. One was crouched up much in that attitude of worship in which you’ll see the faithful, from Emperors to shepherds, crouched in any early medieval carving or Byzantine mosaic. There must be something in the theory that if you take a position it will gradually shape your mood. I know I found this dark seat into which I had dropped curiously, compellingly reten
tive. I don’t think I thought anything. I was just content to sit curled up and—again I think this must be generally true, for most of us know that it occurs dozing in bed—because I was physically curled up, I was able to let all the psychical knots and tangles of the day uncurl. I felt a steady cool relief and a most refreshing indifference coming over me. I didn’t think of getting on. All I did resolve was not to disturb such a state for a while yet, and I did recognize that this was the kind of cooling-off and uncurling of which I had been standing in such keen need.
My outward attention, too, when it did awake, awoke as it does after sleep. For the first thing that struck it was a tiny piece of casual curiosity. I thought I could hear a sound. I wasn’t anxious to make out what it could be—only quite idly to judge, if I could, where it might be. The evening outside, I remembered, had been dead still as the last green light spread calmly over the sunken sun toward the north. And inside here the stillness was increased, if anything. And yet there was a sub-sound. Yes, that was it: not a sound in the place but a sub-sound, something more like a feeling than a matter of hearing—some deep-down and very faint vibration, deep down, deep under. It was soothing in itself, and the question of its exact locality kept my curiosity from becoming restless and visual and stirring me up either to see if the place couldn’t be seen, now that my eyes were more used to the gloom, or, if not, whether I wouldn’t decide I must come some other time and now had better get home. And my attention was rewarded, at least to my own drowsy satisfaction. For I came quite clearly to the conclusion, though don’t ask me to tell you clearly my reasons, that the sound came, as it were, in a line, that it was a kind of flow that ran—if ran is not too swift a word—just in front of me. I was on some kind of margin, I and my end of the seat and the bell-cote entrance; and the other side was the rest of the chapel. And just as I had settled that, and one side of my mind, like a restless child with an elder person, wanted to hurry me on, I was able to delay again. For now that I had made out the whereabouts of this, the first, faint sub-murmur, I heard something else. And again there was the same kind of pleasant pointless mystery about it.
Whence was it coming? Well, I went through the same process. I decided to place it before trying to think what it could be. After a few moments of waiting and attention, I felt pretty clear on that point. It came from the other side of my first sound. It rose from the other side of the margin of sub-sound on which I sat. I could tell it, distinguish it, because it was, though if anything even more faint, of quite a different quality. The first sound was—how shall I put it, steady? No, that’s not quite the sense I want to convey. The only word I can find is indifferent, but I know that’s clumsy. Perhaps I’d better say the first, the nearer sound, was going its own way. It was not paying attention. It was restful because it had about its flow something immemorial, something that followed its course regardless of all ordinary life. It wasn’t struggling with anything. Its force was inevitable. I say all this mainly to make clear the impression made by the other sub-sound. For it was absolutely the reverse. It was at the very limit of one’s sensing, but one felt that, if one were close up to it, it would be much stronger, yes, and much more urgent. Yes, I think even then I would have gone as far as that: that it was much more charged, much more locked, packed, set, and condensed. I don’t want to make out that at this time I thought more of it or guessed more of it than I did. Had I, it’s pretty clear I wouldn’t have gone there again. But I did get a sense that though it was at a great distance—at least as far as limits of apprehension went—it was very tense—or perhaps I should say of very high tension. The sound at my feet was of high amperage; the one the other side of that of very high voltage.
I know I amused myself playing with such analogies until I woke up to the fact that I’d better be getting home to supper and bed. I felt my way back along through the narrow postern. As I pulled the door after me, it made a long low squeak, and, at that moment—you know how that often happens—I thought this quite understandable sound had overscored one much more interesting, odd. It was merely an impression. Just enough to make me stand still when I got outside, listening. But now I was quite certain of the profound stillness and emptiness of the summer night. Far away down the combe I heard the small whoop of an owl, and still farther away on that smoothness of silence was etched the small murmur of the town. It was so calm a night, I recall, that the sea couldn’t be heard at all. I strode along much refreshed by my curl-up and much pleased with my find. The more I thought of it, the more I felt this was quite providential. The walk in itself was lovely, and every day, even when it was raining, I could sit in that quite delightfully alien place and so let the spring of my mind get back its temper. You see, it was just because the place was such a complete contrast that I delighted in it so—not merely a contrast to my colleagues and our common concern but to the part I was honestly, if with increasing effort, playing. The world was full then of the word Escapism. Well, this was my escape, and like a wise child I was going to hide my cubbyhole from everyone else. I smiled to myself as I thought, here is my daydream fairy tale. Here is the place where the hardheaded civil servant—the man who accepts the current slogans and is a hundred per cent in the going concern, and up against the grim facts of life and all that—can cease for the necessary time to be all that. This was better than sleep—far better than any type of sleep that could be given or gotten in a wartime lodging house full of all sorts, combined only by the tension of a common war concern. I swung down the other side of the hill and saw as I looked back that my “city of refuge” had already sunk out of sight. Against the darkling sky rose only the shoulder of the down. And I very soon reached my home-end of the straggling town. I hadn’t realized that it sent out a sort of rootlet of houses so far up this combe. A couple of rather grim reminders of what the nineteenth century thought home to be met me before I had gone more than half a mile.
The next day while at work I noticed time and again that the place floated into the background of my mind and, actually, when at lunch one of the men began to talk about the countryside, I was tempted to ask did they know anything about old churches possibly near by. I suppressed the wish, remembering my promise to myself not to let a hint slip, and that naturally kept the spot in my mind most of the rest of the day. I managed to stay on a bit later than those in my room, then slipped out and got safely off in the direction of my track. Now there was only one misgiving in my mind—what if the place should be locked? I strode along and was able to gauge my queer interest in my find in the fear I had that it might no longer prove open. Then I mended my pace when I set myself to the hill and saw my city of refuge loom above it. I was a bit out of breath when I came up to it, but I think I drew my breath all the quicker when I saw the hasp was loose, as before. I was free to enter.
I paused a moment and then slipped in, found my seat—of course, I couldn’t miss it—and curled up. I’ve said I was a bit out of breath, for I hadn’t paused long enough to get back an even flow, so that may have been the reason for my impression. But I know I thought that just as I entered my breathing echoed in a way I did not think I could be making sufficient noise to cause. As soon as I could, I softened my breaths and listened. No, there was nothing. I was alone in the place. I settled myself away from the tension of attention. Then, once again as I centered down—as I believe Quakers say of the state they sometimes attain in their silent meetings—I became aware of the two sub-sounds or vibrations I had noticed yesterday. But my attention was, as then, quite without tenseness. I was just detachedly interested—or, rather, I was content to send the restless side of my mind off—as someone who wants to lie on a hillside in the sun is glad to get his dog to investigate a series of rabbit holes.
Perhaps I’ve said enough to show why that became my routine for a number of days. Wet or fine, I used to make my route. I excused myself to my colleagues, saying that I found my health was needing this exercise. They were good fellows and quite agreeable that no one should wait supper for
me. Yes, at that stage I felt quite clear that I had won a reprieve on my nerves, a new, blessed way of blunting down one’s edginess. And I think they were all the more willing to let me have my way and my spell of lonely exercise as they saw how, when we did meet, the old cordiality with which we had started had largely been restored. But even the best of habits has to grow, I suppose. At least, if you are taking a dose of the best sedative, if your strain is growing so must your dose. And our strain was growing. The enemy, we felt—perhaps that’s only the self-centeredness everyone has—must have found out the importance of our little setup. Again, there’s little doubt we were no more important than a hundred other of those sub-ganglia of the distributed administrative brain of Britain. But few offices can allow they are not key posts. Certainly we got our share of attention and certainly we found it tiring—it is a nuisance to have your card indexes made into a sea and land paper chase. Sometimes in the first irritation one would rather have had one’s secretary similarly distributed. We had a good doctor to look after us—a man who believed in prevention being better than cure. When the night sky visits became more or less something that had to be expected, he set up a regime for us. He had interviews with each of us. He took me one of the first. I was interested to see how thoroughly he had surveyed the sheep of his pasture. He knew quite a lot about me, though I think I’d paid him only one visit for a slight attack of indigestion. And his advice to me this time was a development of what he had given before. His main rule—for he said he was going to insist on it—was that I must take Sunday afternoon off. The greater the strain, the shorter the shifts, was his formula, and he certainly had made a fine study of fatigue and exhaustion rates. So, though honestly very unwillingly, I said I would keep the rule,—for he said if I didn’t the juniors wouldn’t—and would always take off my Sunday P.M.