He waved me blandly aside. ‘I blame nobody, my dear young lady. Mine are merely old-fashioned opinions; and I have no wish to enforce them. Nor even to share them. My views, I mean’ – he whisked me a generous little bow – ‘not these few sunny minutes. They indeed are a rare privilege. No, I loved old things when I was a child; I love them now. I despise nothing simply because the Almighty has concealed its uses. I see no virtue in mere size, or in mere rapidity of motion. Nor can I detect any particular preciousness in time “saved”, as you call it, merely to be wasted.’
The gay handkerchief flicked these sentiments to the heavens as if in contemptuous challenge of the complete Railway Companies of the Solar System, and dismayed with the burden of my responsibility, I gazed out once more into the bird-enchanted, shadowy greenland – whispering its decoy to us immediately on the other side of its low stone wall.
A brief silence fell. There seemed suddenly to be nothing left to talk about. The old gentleman peered sidelong at me an instant, then thrust out a cramped-up hand, and lightly touched my sleeve.
‘I see you don’t much affect my old-fashioned tune, ma’am. But such things will not pester you for long. Most of my school have years since set out on the long vacation. Soon they’ll be packing me off too; and not a soul left to write my epitaph …
‘Here lies old bones;
Sam Gilpin once.
‘How’ll that do, heh?’ He rocked gently on his gingham.’ “Sam Gilpin once …” But that’s gone too,’ he added, as if he were over-familiar with the thought.
‘But I do understand, perfectly,’ I managed to blurt out at last. ‘And I agree. And it’s hateful. But we can’t help ourselves! You see we must go on. It’s the – the momentum; the sheer impetus.’
He openly smiled on me. ‘Well, well, well!’ he said. ‘Must go on, eh? And soon, too, must I. So we’re both of a mind at last. And that being so, I wish I could admit you into my museum over yonder. It is my last resource. I spend a peaceful hour in it whenever I can. Hardly a day passes just now but I make my pilgrimage there – between (to be precise, my dear young lady) – between the 7.23 up and the 8.44 down.’
‘And there are epitaphs?’ I cried gaily, with that peculiar little bell-peal in the voice, I’m afraid, which one simply cannot avoid when trying to placate infants, the ailing, and the aged.
‘Ay, epitaphs,’ he repeated. ‘But very few of this headlong century. The art is lost; the spirit’s changed. Once the living and the dead were in a good honest humour with one another. You could chisel the truth in, even over a lifelong crony’s clay. You could still share a jest together; one on this side of the grave, one on that. But now the custom’s gone with the mind. We are too mortal solemn or too mortal hasty and shallow.
‘Why, over there, mark ye’ – he pointed the great fat-ferruled stump of his umbrella towards the half-buried tombstones once more – ‘over there, such things are as common as buttercups. And I know most of ’em by heart. My father, ma’am, was the last human creature laid to rest in that graveyard. He was a scholar of a still older school than I – and that’s next quietest to being in one’s grave. I remember his tree there when it sighed no louder than a meadow brook. Shut your eyes now of a windy evening, and it might be the Atlantic. There they lie. And I’ll crawl in somewhere yet, like the cat in the adage – out of this noisy polluted world!’ A little angry cloud began to settle on his old face once more.
‘And there’s two things else make it an uncommon pleasant place to rest in – a little brawling stream, that courses along upon its southern boundary, and the bees and butterflies and birds. There’s rare plantage there, and it attracts rare visitors – though not, I am grateful to say, the human biped. No.’
Yet again a swallow swooped in from the noonday blue in a flight serene and lovely as a resting moonbeam. Somewhere behind the peculiar fretwork with which all railway directors embellish their hostels it deposited its tiny bundle of flies in squawking mouths out of sight though not out of hearing, and, with a flicker of pinion, was out, off, away again, into the air.
My old gentleman had not noticed it. He was still gently fuming over the murdered past: still wagging his head in dudgeon in his antique high hat.
‘But I had no idea,’ I ventured to insinuate at last, ‘there were ever many really original epi —’
‘I am not expectant of “ideas” nowadays, ma’am,’ he retaliated. ‘We don’t think: we plot. We don’t live: we huddle. We deafen ourselves by shouting. “There is no peace, saith my God …” and I’ll eat my hat, if He did not mean for the blind worms as well as “for the wicked”.’
He stooped forward to look into my face. ‘Smile you may, ma’am,’ he went on a little petulantly, patting his emphasis once more on the yellowed ivory handle of his umbrella, ‘you know there is not. But there, they too had their little faults. They were often flints to the poor; merciless to the humble:
‘No Voice to scold;
No face to frown;
No hand to smite
The helpless down:
Ay, Stranger, here
An Infant lies.
With worms for
Welcome Paradise.
‘That’s there, I grant ye; to commemorate what they called a charity brat; that’s there, and it was true to the times.’
His voice had completely changed in his old-fashioned recitation of the little verses; he declaimed them with oval mouth, without gesture, and yet with a kind of half-timid enthusiasm.
‘And then,’ he continued, ‘there’s little Ann Hards:
‘They took me in Death dim,
And signed me with God’s Cross;
Now am I Cherub praising Him
Who but an infant was.
‘And not many yards distant is a spinster lady who used to live in that old Tudor house whose chimney-stacks you can see there above the trees. She was a little “childish”, poor creature, but a gentle loving soul – Alice Hew:
‘Sleep sound, Mistress Hew!
Birds sing over you:
The sweet flowers flourish
Your own hands did nourish;
And many’s the child
By their beauty beguiled.
They prattle and play
Till night call them away;
In shadow and dew:
Sleep sound, Mistress Hew!’
I leant forward in the warm ambrosial air. It seemed I could almost read the distant stones myself in its honey-laden clearness. ‘Please, please go on – if it does not tire you. How I wish I could venture in! But there goes the station master – the “Station Master”! Isn’t that medieval enough? And I suppose there’ll be no time!’
‘Right once more: the bull’s-eye once more,’ he retorted in triumph. ‘No time; and less eternity. Think of it: I must have been fifty years on this world before those young eyes of yours were even opened. And was the spirit within you in a worse place then than this, think ye? And for the fifty years that you, perhaps, have yet to endure, shall I be in a worse, think ye?’ A queer zestful look had spread over his features; and once again he lifted his voice, decanting the next lines as if in praise of some old vintage port:
‘All men are mortal, and I know ’t;
As soon as man’s up he’s down;
Here lies the ashes of Thomas Groat,
Gone for to seek his Crown.
‘I knew Groat’s nephews. “Old Tom” he used to be called; and by the wags, “Unsweetened”. In three years they drank down the money that he had taken fifty to amass. He died of a stroke the night before my father was born – with a lighted candle and a key in his hand. Going to bed, ma’am.
‘Then there’s old Sammie Gurdon’s. Another character – twenty stone to the ounce; redder than his own Christmas baron of beef; with a good lady to match. But the inn’s pulled down now, and a chocolate-coloured jail has been erected over its ruins they call an hotel. And his son’s dead too:
‘Maybe, my friend, thou’rt main athirst,
Hungry and tired, maybe:
Then turn thy face by yon vane, due west;
Trudge country miles but three;
I’ll warrant my son, of the “Golden Swan”,
Will warmly welcome thee.
‘“Golden Swan”! You should see it to-day ma’am. “Ugly Duckling” would be nearer the mark! And now, if you’ll take advantage of this elegant bench a moment’ – he proffered a trembling and gallant hand – ‘you may just espy the sisters. See, now’ – he had climbed up beside me – ‘there’s their cypresses, and, in the shade beneath, you should catch sight of the urns. Terra-cotta, ma’am; three. Do you see ’em? Three.’
I gazed and I gazed. And at last nodded violently.
‘Good!’ he cried. ‘And thus it runs.’ He traced with his umbrella in the air, over the inscription, as it were:
‘Three sisters rest beneath
This cypress shade,
Sprightly Rebecca, Anne,
And Adelaide.
Gentle their hearts to all
On earth, save Man;
In Him, they said, all Grief,
All Wo began.
Spinsters they lived, and spinsters
Here are laid;
Sprightly Rebecca, Anne,
And Adelaide.
‘And their nieces and grandnieces have gone on saying it – with worse manners – until one’s ashamed to look one’s own cat in the face. But that’s neither here nor there. To judge from their portraits, mind ye, they were a rather masculine trio. And Nature prefers happy mediums. I’m not condemning them, dear young lady. God forbid; I’m no Puritan. But —’
‘That reminds me,’ I interposed hastily, ‘of an epitaph in my own little churchyard – Gloucestershire: it’s on a wife:
‘Here lies my wife,
Susannah Prout;
She was a shrew
I don’t misdoubt:
Yet all I have
I’d give, could she
But for one hour
Come back to me.’
‘A gem! a gem! my dear young lady,’ cried my old gentleman – as if he had himself remained a bachelor solely by accident; ‘and that reminds me of one my dear Mother never tired of repeating:
‘Ye say: We sleep.
But nay, We wake.
Life was that strange and chequered dream
For the waking’s sake.
‘And that reminds me of yet another which I chanced on – if memory does not deceive me – in one of the old city churches – of London: ah, twenty years gone or more:
‘Here lieth Nat Vole,
Asleep now, poor Soul!
’Twas one of his whims
To be telling his dreams,
Of the Lands therein seen
And the Journeys he’d been!
La, if now he could speak,
He’d not listeners seek!’
‘And who wrote that, I wonder?’
‘Ah,’ he echoed slyly, “‘Who killed Cock Robin?” Dickie Doggerel, maybe – his mark! But what I was going to tell you concerns yet another spinster; also of this parish. Names are no matter. She was a wild, dark-eyed solitary creature, and in the wisdom of the Lord had a tyrant for a father. Even in the nursery – generally a quiet enough little mite – when once she had made up her mind, there was no gainsaying her. And she had a peculiar habit – a rooted instinct – my dear young lady, when she was crossed, of flinging herself flat on her face on the floor. Quite silent, mind ye – like one of those corpse-mimicking insects. Nothing would move her, while she could claw tight to anything at hand.
‘However trivial the cause – perhaps a mere riband in her hair – that was the result. In a word, as we used to say when we were boys, she shammed dead. Of course, as the years went by, these fits of stubborn obstinacy were less frequent. All went pretty well for a time, until her very wedding-day – bells ringing, guests swarming, almond-blossom sprouting, bridesmaids blooming – all of a zest. And then and there, fresh from her maid, she flung herself flat on her face once more. Refused to speak, refused to stir. Her father stormed; her aunts cajoled; her old nurse turned on the wateringcart.’ My old gentleman grimly chuckled. ‘No mortal use at all. The lass was adamant.
‘And fippety-foppety Mr Bridegroom, whom I never cared much for sight or scent of, must needs smile and smile and return home to think it over. From that moment her father too fell mum. They shared the same house, the same rooms, the same table – but mute as fish. And either for want of liberty or want of company, the poor young thing fell into what they used to call a decline. And then she died. And the old despot buried her, laying her north to south, and face downward in her coffin.’
‘Face downward!’ I exclaimed.
‘Face downward,’ he echoed, ‘as by rights our sprightly three over yonder should have been buried, being all old maids. And she, poor soul, scarce in her twenties … And for text: “Thou art thy mother’s daughter.”’
‘Autres temps, autres moeurs,’ I ventured, but feeling uncommonly like a piping wren meanwhile.
‘Ah, ah, ah!’ laughed my old gentleman; ‘I have noticed it! … And now, perhaps you may be able to detect with those young eyes of yours a little old tombstone set under that cypress yonder … Too far? Too “dark”, eh? … Well, that’s a sailor’s; found wellnigh entirely fish-eaten in the Cove yonder – under Cheppelstoke Cliff. And pretty much to the point it is. Let – me – see. Ay, thus it goes.’ He argued it out with his gloved forefinger for me:
‘If thou, Stranger, be John Virgin, then the
Corse withinunder is nameless, for the Sea
so disfigured thy Face, none could tell
whether thou were John Virgin or no:
‘Ay, and whatever name I bore
I thank the Lord I be
Six foot in English earth, and not
Six fathom in the sea.
‘Good English sense, that, with a bay-leaf of Greek and a pinch of Irish to keep it sweet. He was the ne’er-do-well son of an old miller, so they say, who ground for nothing for the poor. So that’s once upon a time too! But there, ma’am, I’m fatiguing you …’
‘Please, please go on,’ I pleaded hurriedly. ‘What’s that curious rounded stone rather apart from the others, with the ivy, a little up the hill?’ We had resumed our seats on the hard varnished bench, as happy as lovebirds on a perch. My old gentleman evidently enjoyed being questioned.
‘What, Fanny’s? That’s Fanny Meadows’s, died of a consumption, poor lass, 1762 – May 1762:
‘“One, two three” —
O, it was a ring
Where all did play
The hours away,
Did laugh and sing
Still, “One, two, three,”
Ay, even me
They made go round
To our voices’ sound:
’Twas life’s bright game
And Death was “he”.
We laughed and ran
Oh, breathlessly!
And I, why, I
But a maid was then,
Pretty and winsome,
And scarce nineteen;
But ’twas “One – two – three;
And – out goes she!”’
His aged, faded eyes, blue as a raven’s, narrowed at me an instant; and the queerest glimpse, almost one of anxiety, came into his face. He raised his head, as if to smile the reminder away, and busily continued. ‘Now come back a little, along this side. A few paces beyond, under the hornbeam, lies Ned Gunn, a notorious poacher in these parts – though the ingrate’s forgotten his dog:
‘Where be Sam Potter now?
Dead as King Solomon.
Where Harry Airte I knew?
Gone, my friend, gone.
Where Dick, the pugilist?
Dead calm – due East and West.
Toby and Rob and Jack?
Dust every one.
Sure, they’ll no more come back?
No: nor Ned Gunn.
‘Not that there would be many to welcome him if he did. And next him lies a curmudgeonly old fellow of the name of Simpson, who lived in that old yellow stone house you may have seen beyond the meadows. He was a kind of caretaker. Many’s the time he chased me when I was a lad for trespassing there:
‘“Is that John Simpson?”
“Ay, it be.”
“What was thy age, John?”
“Eighty-three.”
“Was’t happy in life, John?”
“Life is vain.”
“What then of death, friend?”
“Ask again.”
‘And that, my dear young lady, is wisdom at any age; though Simpson himself, mind ye, couldn’t mumble at last a word you could understand, having no teeth in his head. And yet another stranger is rotting away under an oblong of oak a pace or two beyond Simpson. I don’t mean he was strange to the locality’ – he gazed full at me over his spectacles – ‘not at all – I knew him well; though by habit he was a silent close-mouthed man, with a queer dark eye. I mean he was strange to this World. And he wrote his own epitaph:
‘Dig not my grave o’er deep
Lest in my sleep
I strive with sudden fear
Toward the sweet air.
‘Alas! Lest my shut eyes
Should open clear
To the depth and the narrowness —
Pity my fear!
‘Friends, I have such wild fear
Of depth, weight, space;
God give ye cover me
In easy place!
‘Not that they favoured him much on that account! It’s a hard soil. And next him, with snapdragons shutting their mocking mouths at you out of every crumbling cranny, is Tom Head. A renowed bell-ringer in his day:
Short Stories 1895-1926 Page 26